I am in the Pantanal region of Brazil right now with another photo tour group. In this part of the tropics, the birds are incredible. They are everywhere. Some of them are easy to photograph (like hawks and herons) and some very tough. After our morning boat trip in search of kingfishers and other exotic birds, several people in my group and I spent about two hours trying to photograph these lightning-fast monk parakeets. I shot this with a 500mm f/4 lens, but even so I had to crop it to fill the frame with the best part of the image. I took off my 1.4x teleconverter because the magnification at 700mm was too much. I couldn't get the birds in focus simply because they fly so fast with insanely erratic movements. There is a spiral staircase here that allows elevated access to their nests from about 30 feet away, and this is how I was able to capture the top of wings to show the stunning colors. My settings for this picture were 1/6400th of a second, f/8, 4000 ISO. The only way I could freeze the wings was to use these kinds of settings.
5 Comments
Nov 27, 2016, 10:45:59 AM
Jim - Thanks, Daniel. I'm glad you were able to put this information to good use.
Nov 27, 2016, 2:11:54 AM
Daniel Reynaud - Fantastic shot !! And thanks to your previous advice about shooting birds, I was able, yesterday to get a hawk just taking off with really fine and sharp details. :)
Nov 4, 2016, 10:44:39 AM
Jim - Thanks very much, Barbara and Janie.
Nov 4, 2016, 7:16:28 AM
janie Greene - pretty, Thanks for send this...I had a house in Paraguay...and went to the Pantanal several times. Our house was just about 1/4 of a mile from the river there so I didn't have far to go to get to the Paraguay Pantanal...I photographed a lot down there, but I must confess, I never did get a shot to equal yours with that tiny Parakeet...i remember flocks of green Parrots used to fly by our porch, but I never got that shot either..They were always a surprise and roosted in a tree nearby..I always enjoy your blogs! thanks a lot...jg
Nov 3, 2016, 8:46:51 AM
Barbara Vickers - Wow! 1/6400th of a second? 4000 Iso? And no noise? So beautiful!!!