As to #8: At 15 feet (probably an over-estimate) at f/8 the dof behind the point of focus, the bird’s eye, is .24 inches. And yes, at first/16, the increases to .96 inches, slightly less than one inch. So, the feathers on the neck would have been slightly sharper but the feathers of the upper breast would not have been rendered sharp. Going from ISO 2000 to ISO 8000 would have destroyed the fine feather detail. And as I was shooting down a bit at the bird, f/16 would have brought up unwanted detail in the water. Not to mention that the bird were moving rather quickly at the moment I made the frame so lowering the shutter speed would not have been a good plan.

You need to learn to make almost instantaneous decisions when doing bird photography. For more than 40 years I have been focusing on the bird’s eye and working wide open. It has worked very well so far.

As for #5, you are on the right track.

artie

Hi Artie.

Thanks for your reply!

#8 related, for the purpose of understanding more, with expected not sharp results unless “lucky” with handheld: would the DOF been enough even “sacrificing” two stop in ISO (from 2000 to 8000) and two in shutter speed (from 1/4000 s to 1/1000 s) for a same exposure but 2 stop down (from f/8 to f/16)? Roughly the new DOF would have quadruplicated, right?

Indeed for #5 my reply has the wrong approach, I was fooled by thinking to maintain same subject eye level. I had excluded one thing to do that is in general better, faster and simpler.

Alessio