On the first day of my snowy owl workshop in Ontario, Canada, I took this picture of a female landing on her favorite perch. With fast moving subjects like this, it's all about shutter speed. The shutter has to be fast to freeze every feather so all parts of the bird -- even the wing tip feathers -- are tack sharp. Therefore, I put the camera on manual exposure mode and chose 1/2500th of a second. Because the birds have depth, I elected f/11 as my aperture for enough depth of field to cover the whole owl. For the ISO, I used automatic. In other words, my compromise was that I'd accept even an ISO that was fairly high in order to have the shutter and aperture of my choice. Because of the bright light of a low angled morning sun, the ISO turned out to be 800. I was using a Canon 7D Mark II and the new 100-400mm lens, and at 10 frames per second I was able to capture many great wing formations as the bird came in for a landing.
5 Comments
Mar 12, 2016, 3:41:54 PM
Jim - Thanks very much, Daniel.
Mar 12, 2016, 11:09:19 AM
Daniel Reynaud - Absolutely beautiful !! Just back home after 42 days out in my 18 wheeler... Now catching up with your postings :)
Feb 17, 2016, 8:34:41 PM
Jim - Thanks, Barbara, for your compliment, and thanks, Bob, for your comment on our trip. It was definitely a wonderful experience that netted amazing shots, as it was this year, too. We had different owls, but as usual they performed beautifully. Absolutely stunning birds.
Feb 17, 2016, 1:57:21 PM
Barbara Vickers - Great photo of a beautiful creature!
Feb 16, 2016, 10:46:43 PM
Bob Vestal - Hi Jim,
Has it really been a year since we were there? Of course, the answer is yes. Definitely, it was one my most memorable photographic experiences in no small part thanks to you. And thanks for sharing this great shot.
Bob