Birds!
Peter
My Flickr page

I guess you are unable to pre-focus if the 5 perches are all different distances from you.
Peter
My Flickr page

Was going back tomorrow morning BUT smells like the slider on the front left brake caliper is sticking and the disk brake was very hot after a 10 mile journey.
Looks like that will have to be my priotiy tomorrow

Grumpy GrandPa, Recently Retired.
Gotta K-3 iii now, had a K-S2 and so suffering from a relapse and buying digital camera kit.
Previous addiction has resulted in using Zeniths, Yashicamat, Chinons, Minoltas, Samsungs, Fujis, Cosina, Kodak, Lumix, Canon, Nikon and Pentax etc etc - have tried most makes in the past 40 years. Love cameras - love taking photos even more

When shooting birds with my K-1 i use back button focus, single af point, average exposure and AF.C, multiple point is next to useless.
If you use spot exposure you will nearly always get a blown sky in the UK (same with airshows) but at the end of the day it's the detail in the bird you are after not the sky but using average normally enables you to pull more in PP.
I would also be shooting wide open and a faster shutter speed with Kingfishers, they are twitchy little buggers.
Also turn OS/SR off at those shutter speeds if you have it on.
. My Flickr

Am facing similar issues - very few keepers among bird pics..

Will try suggestions in above posts.
Wondering why SR should be turned off with high (how high is high?) shutter speeds... and would it affect negatively if kept on?
Also need to figure out if my lens is focussing correct, or is there some front/back focussing issues... but am not sure how to do this quickly (no short cuts there I guess...)
Regards,
Sridhar
For more "tricks of the trade", see this fellow's You Tube channel:https://www.youtube.com/@simon_dentremont/videos
Yves (another one of those crazy Canucks)

GrumpyGrandPa
Member
Twas a cloudy, overcast day with poor light - my settings were 1600 ISO, 1/1000 sec and f6.3 using the Sigma 50-500mm lens at the 500mm end.
I tried to use the spot meter for exposure and the lake/water background was, obviously, very bright.
Also used the centre spot for the focussing today.
Obviously the kingfisher is a very small, and fast, bird in the scene.
There are 5 perching posts the kingfisher can choose and so it is not possible to use a tripod and a prefocussed and exposed test shot as it moves from one to the other/s.
Would I be better using the more general multi-segment auto-focus points and a more general exposure cluster point setting rather than the spot functions?
At least we don't have to worry about the cost of film and developing nowadays!
Any tips please?
Grumpy GrandPa, Recently Retired.
Gotta K-3 iii now, had a K-S2 and so suffering from a relapse and buying digital camera kit.
Previous addiction has resulted in using Zeniths, Yashicamat, Chinons, Minoltas, Samsungs, Fujis, Cosina, Kodak, Lumix, Canon, Nikon and Pentax etc etc - have tried most makes in the past 40 years. Love cameras - love taking photos even more