Tree Swallow In Flight

Jerry, your images of tree swallows in flight leave me literally speechless. Not only is catching these fast little flyers already a feat in itself, doing it so well is just awe-inspiring. Most of the time the AF won't even lock on, and it is not that their flight path is all that predictable to begin with. Absolutely fantastic excellent work!

I assume that you had to use a very fast shutter speed and that in turn the ISO was relatively high as I notice some noise under the wing. This is in no way intended as a critique on this excellent image; I took the liberty and applied a noise filter (neat image, noise ninja would be an alternative) to this image. The application of any noise filter can often lead to a loss in resolution and a smearing of fine structure but I think I was able to avoid that in this case, see attachment. Regards, Dieter

I am amazed when I see a perfect image of such a small bird. How did you get this focus?

Amazing. I have been trying to get the same shot in the last couple of days, and in Fremont no less. Humming birds are easy to get compared to Tree Swallows.

I suspect this shot was taken in Coyote Hills Regional park in Fremont Ca. There are a number of bird houses next to a marsh. This bird is probably about to land on one (probably just of the left of the image). The camera was probably manually focused and the image cropped. I would be interested to know what the exposure was and if a flash was used. I haven't yet found a good shutter / aperature (depth of field) setting that has worked for me.