On The Wings of Eagles

Yesterday, I got up before the crack of dawn, and rode up to Conowingo Dam with my friend Chris. Why would anyone with a right mind do something like that on such a cold and blustery November day?

One word: EAGLES!

We arrived just as the sun was rising over the river. There were only a couple of other people on hand to witness the awakening of the day — a fisherman, and one other photographer. I jumped out of the car, grabbed my gear (40D, Tokina 12-24mm lens, ND and ND-Grad filters and tripod) and set up the shot at right. A few minutes later, I turned around, and made the image at the top of this story.

Photographing birds is something that I traditionally struggle with, unless they happen to be in the back yard at the feeder, where I can get in really close and have some control over what’s going on. My shots of birds in flight, or at a great distance tend to be somewhat soft. Almost all of the over 600 images I made yesterday are just the same. However, I still came away with a few keepers, which are at my flickr stream. Chris’ pictures can be seen here.

It was almost the end of the day before I finally got to figure out what I may have been doing wrong all these years — too low a shutter speed! And, this is something that I really should have been able to figure out before now.

When you’re shooting something like a flying Bald Eagle, you really need a minimum shutter speed of 1/1000 second, even with a good tripod or image-stabilized lens. Face it — wielding a lens and camera that weigh in at 6+ pounds, and with an effective focal length of 640mm, hand-holding steadily is just not happening while panning with a flying bird!

So, I learned a lot yesterday. In reviewing the metadata for the pictures, and looking closely at the results, I probably would have sacrificed a little more depth-of-field, and used a lower ISO. I really didn’t need to be in the vicinity of f/13 for this stuff. f/8 and 1/1250th at ISO400 would have been great for most of the mid-morning through mid-afternoon stuff.

I also saw a few items of equipment that would help to do a better job of this kind of photography. First, and completely out of the question at this point, is a longer lens — something like a 400mm f/4 would have been good. Also, a better tripod mount. I abandoned the tripod early on because controlling the ball-head was nearly impossible. A gimbal-mount, such as a Jobu Jr. would be much easier to deal with. Finally a Katz Eye focusing screen for the 40D would be a great asset for those times when the autofocus just can’t hack it.

Some other fun aspects of the day were seeing Tom Perry again. I haven’t seen Tom in a while, and it’s always good to catch up with him. And, we got to meet another flickr user, Ozoni11. It was fun to be able to put a face with his name!