I'm posting one more sandhill crane shot because this one really shows the grace and beauty of these birds, especially when they land and take off. The only thing I did to this image in post-processing was slightly darken the background to direct all the attention on the bird, and I sharpened it slightly using Topaz Sharpen AI. Shooting at 20 frames per second as I did on the Canon R5 means you discard a lot of frames, but I also means you get a lot of keepers. To be honest, I was blown away by how many great flight shots I was able to get. With the eye tracking technology, a fast frame rate, and myriad opportunities to capture great action, what we can capture now compared to the past is incredible. I remember trying to photograph birds in flight years ago with my medium format film camera, the Mamiya RZ 67. Manual focus, manual exposure, manual film advance, and very slow films really meant no sane person would try to photograph fast moving subjects. Nevertheless, and obviously not being of sound mind, I tried. With the fastest shutter speed on the Mamiya at 1/400, it was an exercise in extreme frustration. In 25 years, I think I was able to get two shots that were sort of okay. My settings for this picture were 1/3200, f/10, and 6400.
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