Being keen to explore further the capabilities of my new toy - the Canon R5 Mark II, I booked another session at Pete Whieldon's excellent Kingfisher hide at Otterbourne, near Winchester.
I was lucky with the weather this time, which was bright and sunny for the few hours of available daylight at this time of year. Just what was needed for action shots, and quite unlike my previous visit last January, which was on a very dull day.
To start with, there was no sign of the bird, and I began to fear that the trip had been in vain. However eventually the bird appeared at 11:00, whereupon it was very active for the remainder of the day.
My highest priority for this session was to try out again the pre-capture facility on the R5 Mark II. Perhaps I was being overly ambitious but I was also trying to get diving shots using my original R5, simply pre-focussed on the diving spot. So for every dive, I was trying to simultaneously press the cable release for the R5 and fully press the shutter button on the R5 Mark II!
What I found was the pre-capture worked fine in itself, but the AF seldom if ever followed the bird down beyond the perch. It worked much better however when the bird flew off - as there was nothing else along the bird's trajectory for the AF to get confused by.
Here is a selection of photos I took through the day. Click on any of the captions to go to my website and see larger images.
Also, see my Kingfisher gallery for more high res. versions of all the photos from this and other occasions.
 |
| Kingfisher flying off, almost directly towards me (R5 Mk II, pre-capture) © Stephen Burch |
 |
| Kingfisher flying off more sideways (R5 Mk II, pre-capture) © Stephen Burch |
 |
| Kingfisher flying off from a closer perch (R5 Mk II, pre-capture) © Stephen Burch |
 |
| Diving shot (R5, pre-focussed) © Stephen Burch |
 |
| Diving shot (R5, pre-focussed) © Stephen Burch |
 |
| Stunning the fish before consuming it! © Stephen Burch |
No comments:
Post a Comment