p.1 #1 · Long-tailed sylph take off sequence at maximum frame rate
I was trying to capture landing and capture sequences of birds in general and of hummingbirds in particular on a recent trip to Ecuador. And I got mixed results in the first few days. Especially hummingbirds are extremely fast, and I had to get them at a certain magnification to make the images meaningful and as such, I couldn't setup my camera too far away from them to take advantage of the depth-of-field. In the beginning, I did get between up to 2 images and the subsequent images were OOF due to short distance and by frankly, my camera had a tough time keeping up with the speed of these speeding bullets.
It rained a lot in the 8 days I was there. And it was raining in the morning of the last day. The hummers really enjoy the rain that morning and they became active. There was a long-tailed sylph that put on a show for me that morning. I cranked up the drive of my gear to 30FPS and captured a sequence at 1/4000 of this guy taking off. For whatever reasons, shortly before took off from the perch, it changed its mind and didn't fly diagonally towards me but it flew sideway first. This allowed my camera to focus track this guy. Talking about getting lucky... From start to finish I got 15 images in focus but I am including 11 here. I left out the first two, one in the middle and the last one, since it was out of the frame.
Thank you for stopping by and please feel free to leave any feedback,
Joshua
p.1 #7 · Long-tailed sylph take off sequence at maximum frame rate
birdied wrote:
Amazing work Joshua !!! You really captured and showed off the name sake of this bird , the long tail .
When you say , I couldn’t set my camera too far away, were you shooting remotely?
Birdie
Thank you very much, Birdie! No, I was right behind the camera. What I meant was I had to keep the distance between my location and the perch within reasons. If the distance was far, more than it was here, I would have been able to get more images in frame and in focus but the resulting magnification may not be enough, I was afraid. I am a “greedy” photographer that likes to get as much real estate sensor as possible. Those frames were cropped alright but not that much, hence the details of 50MP sensor are palpable.
p.1 #12 · Long-tailed sylph take off sequence at maximum frame rate
Such beautiful images, Joshua. I recently acquired the same set up of camera and lens, but I'm just learning how to use it. Thanks very much for your narrative that puts into perspective your efforts, choices, and persistence in getting these fine images.
p.1 #13 · Long-tailed sylph take off sequence at maximum frame rate
Lil Judd wrote:
Beautiful bird and beautifully done
Lil
Thank you very much, Lil!
roadapple wrote:
Beautiful images Joshua ! The tail tells the story of pre-flight...great captures.
Tom, I appreciate your kind words! Yes, it does, doesn't it?
gcooke0522 wrote:
Excellent set of images!
Gordon
I appreciate your kind words, Gordon!
Douglas L wrote:
YGMV! Joshua. Just outstanding images of such a beauty.
Douglas, thank you very much for your kind words and vote!
jdc562 wrote:
Such beautiful images, Joshua. I recently acquired the same set up of camera and lens, but I'm just learning how to use it. Thanks very much for your narrative that puts into perspective your efforts, choices, and persistence in getting these fine images.
Thank you very much, jdc562! I see that we are semi-local from each other. I am sure we will bump into each other at one of those shooting locations before too long then. The question is how do we recognize each other then ? I will be on the look out for folks that use the same gear.
