This is a male resplendent quetzal I photographed last year in Costa Rica. The bird was bringing food to feed nearly hatched chicks. I used my typical settings for birds in flight -- 1/3200, f/8, and due to the relatively low light, 5000 ISO. With most birds, this shutter speed is fast enough to freeze the tips of the wing feathers. Hummingbirds need a much faster speed, and for those I typically use a flash with reduced power output so the flash duration is 15,000th of a second. I'm not a fan of blurred wings unless I'm trying to create an abstraction of motion. In that case I'll use a shutter between 1/8 and 1/30th of a second.
0 Comments