Today I was testing out my new camera wrist strap (I really don’t like or ever use the neck strap) for comfort and suitability when panning. I chose this image because it was the slowest and showed the best motion blur associated with panning on the ibis. I also liked the composition.
There where several other decent candidates, and a fair few blurred rejects. So the wrist strap was comfy but didn't guarantee panning success, which I still but down mainly to luck.
For some time I have realised that using anti-shake and auto focus while panning after birds in flight was counter productive. Most often I missed the great shot as the lens drives back and forth trying to focus or worse it would find something well in the background, behind the action and I have a blurred bird. So I’ve been brave and stopped down a bit (eg f8 of higher, to get a bit of latitude in depth of field, DOF) and manual focussed in the middle distance where I expected the bird to fly. Then I set the camera into multi-shoot and follow the birds flight in a conventional smooth pan with my finger held down. Depending on the light I usually get a better sequence with just a little motion blur in the background (see below). However the photo above is the last shot in the sequence just as the sea gull is flying out of my depth field range and the distant background, well up the beach, is out of focus. Giving it a pleasingly ambiguous “into the unknown feel”
How about this for a remarkably clever little device.
Thanks to +Trey Ratcliff, at google+ for the heads up on this. You can contact the NZ makers at syrp.co.nz
I’ve been out a bit the past few nights just hoping for a glimpse of the aurora austarils, as there have been some extreme magnetic storms occurring, the Australian weather bureau actually have a great space weather forecast site. No luck on that aurora front in Melbourne though, but I have managed some interesting long exposures and was even contemplating how to make a time lapse sequence of the night sky. (Now I realize there might be an easier way, with the help of a little genie, plus the near $1,000 price tag!)
