I captured this northern crested caracara from a blind in south Texas. This is my favorite type of bird-in-flight shot -- wings outspread symmetrically, tail feathers flared out, and everything sharp including the wing tip feathers. The Canon R5 tracked the bird incoming and kept focus on it beautifully. I used a Canon 100-400mm lens along with a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 560mm of focal length, and the settings were 1/2500, f/8, and 500 ISO. For smaller birds, I was using speeds of 1/3200 and 1/4000 simply because their wings move faster than the larger birds. I don't like to see blurred images of birds in flight, thus the super fast speeds. I know some photographers like blur in these instances because, they argue, it suggests motion. Motion blur, though, is a manmade construct. In realisty, we never see blur with our eyes (assuming you are wearing glasses if needed), and in my opinion it's not necessary to 'imply' motion. Any picture of a bird that's airborne has obviously captured motion.
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