European bee-eater and dragonfly.

What equipment did you use? I am looking to upgrade my telephoto lenses and would like some info on this image.

 

By the way, this is much better than a lot of National Geographic images, and so are many others on this sight. To work for National you do have to be good but you also have to know the rite people.

quite amazing, I'll agree. A faster shutter might have caught more detail in the wings, but in this case, the flutter/fuzziness works well. Nice job.

The accolades are very well deserved. This is a simply beautiful image.

 

I have a quick question: is this photograph a cropped image taken from a sequence of photographs that might also have produced this image - http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3207198? Or, are these two photographs of the same bird, at the same location, from the same blind, taken at different times altogether?

 

Regardless of the answer, the presentation is magnificent.

Absolutely great catch. You must have worked long and hard for this. The posture of the bird looks like one of Audubon's paintings. The eye is in perfect focus as is the rest of the bird with the exception of a bit of wing movement which is great. I like the clover or what ever the plant is at the bottom being slightly out of focus but with the far background completely unfocused. I think you did marvelously with this photograph. I have no desires to crop it or make any changes which is a real switch for me.

Doug, I believe that the blurry wings are out of focus at least in part due to a very shallow depth of field, since the wings extend away from the body of the bird. The question for me is just how long a lens was used.

 

--Lannie

I believe that the technical information included with the photo, stating "Au 1250e s", means that it was shot at a 1250th of a second.

Lannie, this is a quote from Vezon's site on gear used:

"Jﾒutilise comme boîtier un Nikon F90 avec zoom 35-70 mm , 70-210 mm plus un 24 mm, un 180 AF 2.8, un 300 AF 4 et un flash SB 24.Jﾒutilise des diapositives sensia ou velvia et je les numérise sur mon ordinateur avec un scanner Nikon coolscan IV. Depuis lﾒannée dernière, jﾒai acheté un reflex numérique D70."

Wonderful timing and it is always to see a bee-eater. In Australia, we also have a species and I will periodically see them near the estuaries. A favourite memory is the time I was minding my own business, then a bee-eater raced down at c. 20 degrees from the vertical and basically SHOT into its hole. Appeared and disappeared from my field of view in a vivid flash.

I stand corrected! It's predominantly a depth of field issue, but the tips of the wings do show a wee pit of flutter. Just a wee bit.

I might be wrong, but if you look closely at the wing's right tip which is in focus, and the wing appears to be drapping straight down, it would then stand to reason that we're likely seeing motion blur.

Is this with autofocus? You have two other similar photos in your portfolio shot less than a minute and a half before this one. You must have picked a prime spot for your hide tent and spent a long time in it.

 

If you manually focused this, I'm impressed. If a D70 tracked this, I'm impressed. Even if you only got 15 keepers out of 400 exposures, it's impressive.

 

Exemplary patience must be the biggest factor in getting shots like these.

 

Bravo!

hmmm, do you think that bird could be stuffed?

When I first saw this image, I was amazed. Composition,exposure ,DOF & light, and ,ofcourse,the colorful subject, made this one an excellent image.

You're a Sniper not a photographer ;-)

 

WAW IMPRESSIONANT TEMPISTIC SHOT!!!

 

NICE FOCUS, REALLY VERY GOOD BOTH ON INSECT AND HEAD OF THE BIRD....

 

I'D LIKE TO KNOW THE CAMERA THAT YOU HAVE USED

 

 

 

IF YOU WANT TO SEE MY PORTFOLIO (nothing confronted whith you) I'll Be onored.............

....a critique from you will be an onour

 

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR PHOTOES Rapino Daniele

Thanks again for your nice comments;This picture was shot with a D70 and 70-210 4-5.6 basic; manuel (not autofocus) at about 5 m of me;the hide was very small and in most of the pictures the bird was out of focus or not in the picture,it is a very fast bird.I have made many,many pictures(thanks to numeric camera) and only a few are good...

I've seen many shots of this particular bird before, but this has to rate right up there among the best. The timing of the shot is about perfect. The blur doesn't bother me because it suggests motion. Thanks for sharing.

I cannot really critique this, since it's just so good, I can only ask questions regarding technique:

Since you have a digital camera, it should record shutter speed, aperture, focal length of lens, actual focus distance, etc. It would be good to have that info along with info on any flash, etc.

I do some birds in flight photographs, and have most success with birds with very predictable feeding patterns. Birds which will come to a feeder, or a nest, or a favorite perch in a predictable manner are the easiest to get. There you can pre-focus on the spot where the bird will approach. Hummingbirds are easiest, as you can precisely pre-focus on the flower or the point a few inches away where the bird hovers to "rest" between sips.

In the case of bug eating birds, it's very difficult. My guess here is that perhaps the shot was taken near a perch in customary use by this bird. (I don't know it's habits.) I also know that dragonflies will use a favored perch to rest between it's hunts. If these were sufficiently close, it's "predictable" that the bird might swoop down on the bug. Setting up the tripod, prefocusing on the spot just beyond the bug, and waiting very patiently might produce this shot. In essence, was it planned, or was it just the result of hundreds of patient exposures? I'm guessing the 2nd, based on your comments, so the question already asked is really important:

How DO you get one in focus? Autofocus will almost never lock on a flying bird for me. Did you use autofocus, or focus manually. Do you play video games, or have some exercises you perform for fast focus?

 

Why do the bird's wingtips appear so dark? Is there some digital editing involved? What kinds of alterations were performed, if any?

 

A wonderful, rare photo. Thanks for posting with us. It's particularly enjoyable to see birds I'm less familiar with from a more international clientelle on PN. 7/7

Very nice but could be better.

If u have gone lower, the background would be uniformly dark instead of half black, half green. I don't really like the background being cut into 2.

As for the bird itself, I would have preferred the wings to be flapped upwards. IMO, that would be a more dramatic and nicer pose.

i can't imagine the amount of patience, persistence and luck that got into capturing this picture. it almost looks staged!!! the background of black highlight the colors of the bird's head and torso. the greenery shows that it is a picture taken in the wild. and the tail is grounded into the green. nice grounding. and you have a good foreground too (more like midground). the layers make the picture really thick. the bokeh is just great. also, wings down for me with the tail down almost in parallel gives the bird a beautiful ballet pose. and besides the underside of this bird's wings won't be as colorful. the flutter is perfect for me as well to highlight successful effort. the bird has triumphed in the food chain! oh how i wish i took this shot.

I like the wings as they are. That insect is a big load for a little bird, so the wings down give an idea of the effort made by the bird flying up with all that load soon after the capture.

I'm not disturbed by the background half green and half black, may-be be I'm a little disturbed by the flowers on the foreground.

Excellent shot anyway!

IT IS A VERY INTERESTING SHOT,IF YOU COULD HAVE THE WINGS OF THE BEE-EATER FLAPPING AND MORE BLURRY THAT WILL BE MORE CAPTIVATING,I PRESUME YOU HAVE USED HIGH SHUTTER SPPED,THE BACKGROUND IS A BIT DISTRACTING IF IS IN SINGLE COLOR WILL BE MUCH BETTER.BUT ANYWAY IT IS A GREAT SHOT,UNDERSTANDABLY TAKING BIRD'S PICTURES NEED A LOTS OF PATIENCE AND TIME ,WELL DONE.

KEN.MALAYSIA

Some research on European bee-eaters reveals they are gregarious, feed and roost communally, about 12" long from beak tip to tail tip, and eat as many as 200-250 bees a day.

 

By inference, one might imagine seeing bee-eaters in fairly large numbers near roosting sites, and given their feeding habits, it's potentially possible to pre-focus on pray at rest and let chance determine if anyone bites (do the math and it might not appear to be such a stretch).

 

No information is given on lens length but knowing the bird's size, one can frame the shot to some approximate dimension given the author's lack of aversion to cropping.

 

If a bird snatches, it would be a matter of bursting as many frames as possible which depending on flight dynamics, it's entirely possible that the bird can stay within the frame for (relatively speaking) quite some time. I don't believe the notion of focusing and trailing a bee-eater in flight is plausible given the near impossible reaction time needed. The posture of the birds in the few similar shots suggests they're near hover, which offers additional clues.

 

I would also guess the lens is set wide open to gain as high a shutter speed as possible (practical).

 

Often a spectacular picture happens in most unspectacular ways, and not to diminish the author's outstanding body of work, I hope my guess is interpreted in the intended spirit of discussion.

Vezon is one of my favorite photographer in this site - so, I am glad to see one of his best work as POW. I will love to know the story behind this photo in details - some tried to guess it for Vezon. But many of us will be benefited if Vezon shares what was his strategy to focus and catch this moment with such a precise execution - use of flash or daylight, etc.

If you hang a dead dragonfly/bee over there, this shot will be a lot easier, I hope that's not the case. If you pay a little bit attention to the legs and tail, I believe the dragonfly was dead already. Otherwise, it's a great capture. Here are two pictures side by side, the background are the same.

Is this a digital or film image? Can you share what type of camera, lens you used? Thanks, great image.