Cormorant With Catfish - Click image to view larger!

Thanks for viewing/comments! .. I was loosing light .. faast but got lucky

since the bird can not eat the catfish right away and had to played with it

for at least 3 minutes. That gave me enough time to put on the 1.4x TC to

get a closer image of this high ISO (1600 is high for Canon birdshots)

slow Shutter Speed (1/400 handheld) shot.

Hi Tm J,

A wonderful capture of Nature in action.

It is nice to see a fine lens used properly here.

Canon designs these lens to be shot wide open and with the 1.4 X teleconverter the performance remains with in 90 % of the original design of 500mm at F/4. 

The newer full frame Canon sensor packages are useful though ISO 6400, with ISO 3200 being good without any issues during most daylight work. 

By the way, I have shot many 700 mm effective focal length lens at 1/60 second hand held, and they do not have Image Stabilization either.

Best Regards, Mike

Thanks Mike! Good to hear from you, I hear you and really like what came out for this shot (do wish for a bit more light). I had the SS down to 1/40 at ISO 500 but the bird was moving quite vigorously trying to down that fish and I had to switch from Auto Aparture to Manual and shoot at 1/400, F5.6 . I was shooting at around 1/40, F4 & ISO 500 prior to that since I don't like to go over ISO 500 much with my 1D Mark III . 

Good action and light on the bird. Nice low angle, background and detail. Another great shot Tm J! Best regards, Rob

Thanks Robert! Nothing like being lucky :-) -  I've just looked at this series (take from last night) and I had exactly 100 shots before I get the right setting by upping the ISO and set the camera to manual to shoot at 1/400, 1/500 to get the bird sharp. Feel sorry for a friend next to me shooting in Auto Aparture with too low of an ISO and got shots at 1/25 which resulted in all blurry images - I am so glad I slowed down, put on the 1.4x TC and check my shot to get this!

Btw, from my observation, the Nikon seems to handle low light much better than Canon.