This is the only time I've captured a lilac-breasted roller in flight and with a meal in its mouth. This beautiful bird is seen throughout east and southern Africa, and it is simply dazzling, especially in flight. They are extremely fast, and just catching a nice wing formation where the bird is sharp is an exercise in frustration. It's doable, but it usually takes many attempts before you can get a winning shot. I tried for years with my medium format and completely manual film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67, and was never successful. Only when I bought my first serious Canon digital camera with a super fast frame rate, fast autofocus tracking, and autoexposure was I finally able to capture rollers in flight. I always use my standard in-flight camera settings to freeze every nuance of the wing feathers -- 1/3200th of a second. I usually use f/11, but I wasn't paying attention and my aperture was f/4 on the 500mm Canon telephoto. The large f/stop, though, meant that the ISO was very low -- just 125 in this case.
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