Bird Watching: Another Bluebird thread, 1 by 2dCousinDave

2dCousinDave wrote:
Duc, most of the day's activity ocurrs at breakfast. Usually before the sun is actually shining. It is usually a feeding frenzy and so much movement is going on and I hate to miss an opportunity so I start with an ISO setting where I get a shutter speed suficient to stop the wings (ideally 1/000 sec or better). Then as the sun rises, and the shuuter speed goes way up, I find it easier to spin the aperture knob to shut down the aperture, thus lowering the shutter speed to where I want it (1/2000 or so).

In the case of the picture above I was using a 1DMark III with the 400mm lens and shooting wide open which is f/4.0. Even though it was about 9:30, it was still cloudy and trying to snow. I would have liked to have had a faster shutter in case he were to jump but I do with what I have to and sometimes I get lucky.

By 12:30 the clouds had thinned out. This one was taken with my other Mark III and the new 600mm lens. With the added light and again shooting wide open (F/4.0), I was able to lower the ISO to 1000 and still got a reasonably fast shutter speed.