Say's Phoebe in flight (Please view LARGER)

Suggestions/comments appreciated; thanks

Very nice capture. I like the motion blur on the wings, this retains the sense of motion. I'm guessing this is a heavy crop or else your getting really, really good with your lens.

Beautiful image Deiter, super colors and placement of the subject in the frame.

Here is the original. Here and here are two more in flight shots; here is one sitting still. Regards, Dieter

Excellent work! Ciao Dieter.

All I can say is good aim!

I suggest you move from pelicans to Northern Flickers (something that chases ants on the ground) and you go out and shoot something that moves faster than a fly! Incredible! And look at the color in background. Wow, wow, wow. Terrific. And guess what, I can't even give you a 7/7. Thanks PN

Came back and re-rated this Deiter, had failed to look at it in larger version,

checked out the original attachment, thought you had lost something in upload,

then clicked larger. "Spot on" small bird in flight! All in all I find these type of shots to be the most impressive and technically difficult shots to pull off in the bird category which is why we see so few of them. Well done.

I expect butterflies in flight from you this summer...oh yes, it can be done, I've seen 2 excellent ones here this year :)))

 

I had tried to find a compromise between the image size of the upload and the quality loss that occurs when PN creates the medium size image everybody sees. My upload is 700 pixels (the crop from the original is about 2000), which got downsized by PN to a size of 679 with a visible loss in quality. Considering the small reduction in size, I wonder why there even has to be a downsizing at all for an image that starts out small already. In fact, it is not the downsizing that creates the artifacts in the medium size (resized) images displayed as the default, it must be that they are saved in a lower JPEG quality. My upload's size is 221kB whereas the resized image displayed is only 26.1kB. In fact, I wish PN would switch to having one standard image size so that we have control over what the viewers actually see, in particular in the all important "Rate Recent" and "Rate Category) views. My guess is that using higher JPEG quality versions would already solve the problem but is likely creating trouble with the bandwidth and/or the memory of their servers.

Thank you, Mary Fran, for coming back; I will likely post a forum thread on this later with a question/suggestion to PN. Regards, Dieter

I find this to be a very attractive image especially the subject and the background colors. I like the idea of the 'motion' in the wings.

An excellent capture with the D200 ! Someone debating about getting the D300 instead should see this. Any details on how you managed the shot? Prefocussing, panning...?

Focused on the perch the bird was resting on and the panning with the bird when it took off.  All in all, a rather lucky shot - none of my lenses have fast enough AF to acquire focus on a small bird in flight - no matter if there is a D200 or a D300 behind them.

While I am convinced that the camera and the lens choice have an impact on the chances to get a good small bird in flight shot, practice and technique are far more important. Here is someone who mastered the art of bird in flight photography - 452 different species, all in flight: