Wedgetail Eagle

Comments Please
I took this shot of a Wedgetail Eagle at Taronga Park Zoo.
They have a free flight bird show with these trained birds doing amazing things such as flying up to people and collecting coin donations
This Eagle would catch dead mice thrown into the air . It has a wingspan of almost 2 metres so it is huge. great show.




DA 50-200 @ 200mm
f5.6
1/350
iso 100

Well, let no one ever say bad things about the 50-200. again I think you did a very good job with it, and it's obvious limitations. To bad about the sky, though. It kills a otherwise very good shot of a beautyful bird.
Martin.

You did better than I did at that show. A worse test of reactions and AF speed I can barely imagine.

This was the best I could manage, and it's hard to imagine a more dreadful pose for the bird, or a more horrible background . It's a fab show, though, for sure.

What lens did you use Chris :
I had more misses than hits also.
The Crane in your pic flew right over my head, i didn't see it coming

It was the FAJ 75-300 I think. I found this too, your Wedgetail I think, but it was awfully underexposed against the sky, and took a fair bit of mucking about with to see any detail.

Have you been to Gigrin Farm in Wales, where they feed the Red Kites every day?

That's a challenge! I think about 1% of my shots were sharp enough.

Dan

Shooting birds in flight is pretty tricky, I remember trying it once with a 500mm F8 mirror lens - my hit rate was just about as bad as you'd expect.

Fast AFC helps a lot although it's still best to take a lot of shots to ensure some have the main focus in the right place.

That shot looks pretty decent - I'd be tempted to crop the sky to the right of the bird so it's flying into the frame rather than central. It looks like there is a fair amount of colour fringing around the tops of the feathers and the focus point looks like it's on the near wing rather than the centre of the bird - that's the main problem I usually get as well and when shooting wide open it usually means the birds eye isn't sharp.

I'll have to drag myself out to one of the islands in the Forth again and have another go with the seagulls.