{"id":12839,"date":"2012-12-25T21:14:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-26T01:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=12839"},"modified":"2012-12-26T12:06:11","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T16:06:11","slug":"why-the-biggest-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2012\/12\/25\/why-the-biggest-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Biggest Gun?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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This Ipswich race Savannah Sparrow was photographed on the recently concluded Barnegat Jetty IPT with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 800mm f\/5.6L IS USM Autofocus lens<\/a>, the Canon 1.4x EF Extender III (teleconverter)<\/a>, and the Canon EOS-1D X digital SLR <\/a>. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1\/3 stop: 1\/400 sec. at f\/10 in Manual mode. <\/p>\n

Central sensor (by necessity)\/AI Servo Expand\/Rear Focus AF on the center of the bird’s breast active at the moment of exposure. (Cropped from a horizontal original.) Click here<\/a> if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. <\/p>\n

Eager to get a frame of this hard to find, hard to photograph race of Savannah Sparrow, I stopped down 2\/3 stop to f\/10 and was happy to get the AF sensor anywhere on this fidgety subject. The bird posed spraddle-legged for about two one-hundredth of a second. I made three images, all sharp, and all with a less-than-ideal head angle. Seeing just a sliver of the bird’s right eye really bugs me. Staring either right or left of right down the lens barrel would have been great but it is what is way. \ud83d\ude42 The head angle above is neither here nor there…. Even 45 degrees would have been a huge improvement. <\/p>\n

Note that this bird was on the jetty and I was off the jetty. A big lens with a teleconverter brought the relatively small subject within range even though I was using a full frame camera body. <\/p>\n