For this one, the IS was a help. When viewed at 100% (50D file), it is almost "critically sharp," having been shot at 400mm & 1/250, wide open. (The image linked represents about 59%, by area, of the full frame.)
No doubt, BIF of medium and low difficulty are quite feasible with 100-400, unless either the camera AF system or lack of operator experience presents impediments.
Quite a few different bird images posted in this thread by different folks illustrate that rather well.
In my own experience, more difficult BIF shots such as pijuns in flight or duck head-on flight shots become somewhat tedious with 100-400 though, particularly against a busy background. If AF is lost for a split second, it does take a long time for the lens to regain its bearings by which time the fast target is long gone.
I have never tried shooting passerines or swallows in flight with the 100-400 nor do I plan to. That task is difficult enough even with the fastest camera/lens combination.
I think in all this one has to use their capture success rate as the governing criterion for the BIF goodness of any lens. We all get lucky shots and fluke shots, however, those can be hardly used to demonstrate the fast action worthiness of a lens. If a lens allows us to get expected results routinely, then it is probably safe to say that we understand that lens performance, be it bad or excellent.
PetKal wrote:
some difficult angles and unconventional yet kinetically justified framing.
I'm keen to learn and this comment has me puzzled. Yes, I have nose room in front of my subjects, which I understand is the kinetically justified bit, but in what way is the framing unconventional? What would "conventional" framing look like for these images? Please, help me improve my birding/photographic skills.
I'm keen to learn and this comment has me puzzled. Yes, I have nose room in front of my subjects, which I understand is the kinetically justified bit, but in what way is the framing unconventional? What would "conventional" framing look like for these images? Please, help me improve my birding/photographic skills.
By "conventional" bird picture framing I mean "shoebox" framing perhaps with some or none, as the case might be, "nose room".
The other conventional, although unfortunately not used as often, framing type is the environmental or habitat bird portrait.
Yours is kinda in between: the panoramic extension of the free nose space places additional pressure on the bird to fly more strongly (but that only works for largely horizontal flights).
I don't know if that will improve your good birding skills.......it hasn't helped me much improve mine.
Ah! OK, my framing is to purposely crop to 16:9, where (IMHO) aesthetics permit, because for personal use I display my images on a 40" HDTV and they look far better with the screen filled corner to corner. Standard 3:2 looks OK, but not ideal, while 4:3 is downright awful and anything in portrait orientation just looks so small by comparison.
The other issue which I face more often than not is my inability to get close enough to my subjects, so I have to balance subject size with acceptable IQ.
