Birds in Flight

In preparation for my trip to the gannets this year, I have been practicing capturing birds in flight with my new Sigma lens. Before I went out this time I did some research on the web to see how others had achieved this and what settings they used to do it. I wrote down the 'recipe' and off I went with a couple of friends.  We sat on the side of the river with our picnic lunches, camera and boots and every now and then you would hear one of us shout "incoming..." and then the click click click of the shutters could be heard.

We did this for several hours before deciding that we had done our dash for the day. From my point of view it was a brilliant exercise because while I shot a lot of images I will discard,  the success rate was high. I am getting more and more comfortable with the large lens and the 'recipe' worked!

All these images were shot with 1/2000 sec shutter speed on TV priority. The stabiliser on the lens turned off and auto focus set to AI servo. ISO was set to 400. The sun was bright so there was enough light for me to achieve these results that I am really happy with.