20 February 2009

Inflight Little Egret - SkyWatch Friday

I have a dream of taking inflight shot of this Little Egret for quite some time. A flock of 3 to 5 egrets usually fly around my backyard at around 8.00 to 9.00am, especially if there was raining the night before.

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)My 400mm lenses always attached to the 1.4x Tc (Teleconverter with 3 pins patched) for better reach (560mm). With that TC, only one peripheral AF point is active, and I miss a lot of opportunity with this flying bird.
For this session, I took off that TC, and sacrificed the reach for better AF speed. AI Servo AF mode was selected.
This is what it look like with activate all 9 cross-type AF points.

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)Full frame photo and croped 50% with Adobe Photoshop CS2
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)Final image after processing.
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)two Egrets flew in between coconut leaves.
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta), Local name: Bangau Kecil, Size: 61cm

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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful shots!!! so clear in zoom!

VALKYRIEN said...

Amazing shots of amazing birds! Forgot to look at the sky.....
The last one is so delicate in its colours. Beautiful!

Louise said...

What you did with your photo opportunity is fantastic!

Sylvia K said...

Really gorgeous! Amazing! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Lovely photos - I wish I had birds like that outside my backyard. All I have is planes! BTW love the photo of the two birds

Suzanne said...

Great photos they turned out so clear and crisp,
Happy SWF.

Unknown said...

Amazing shots!!!this is beautiful.
Have a nice day.

Teri said...

Beautiful clear photos, a pleasure to look at with the bird for focus.

Lilli & Nevada said...

Now that is fabulous, i especially like the last one.

stan said...

I've seen these in the W part of Spore at some time durign the yr. They prob here as part of their migration journey. NIce cropping job there.

Anonymous said...

Lovely little egrets. I like those 2 flying between the coconut leaves. Nice shots.

Diane AZ said...

Beautiful photography! Those birds look so amazing, if I ever saw one flying around my backyard, I would probably be speechless.

Lana Gramlich said...

That first shot's truly spectacular! I have a heck of a time photographing birds in flight, myself. Thanks for the insight into your process here.

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Stunning egret photos! HOw lucky you are to have them fly over your yard, too.

~Lisa
New Mexico, USA

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tips. I too find that I need to back off on the focal lenght to shoot birds in flight. It's a balancing act to get the right combination of detail and framing. Nice pictures!

Its Time to Live said...

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