Again my young but steadily growing Moonlight Grevillea is fulfilling its purpose - attracting bird life into my own back yard.



But reactions, please, to the following.

I have taken to using my tripodwith a rather dubious technique where I hand-hold the camera in position instead of locking down the tripod head when shooting birds. Why? Because no matter how hard I try, the lens drops or raises and the focus point drops from the head of the bird to the body. So I maintain position manually. But I have vibration reduction turned off because I am in my User3 (tripod) mode. Also, in spending time trying to lock the tripod head, I often lose the shot -the bird has flown!!!

I suspect I should keep vibration reduction on in this situation, because I have ended up with a number of not-sharp shots. and should drop shutter and open aperture to reduce ISO and noise. I am assuming that most of my not-sharp shots are due to camera movement, not AF failure.

For this shot, I turned the shake reduction on, while steadying the camera and lens. I got 4 out of 4 shots in focus and sharp. FYI, I am using a Vanguard GH 300T pistol grip ball head on the tripod, with right hand (obviously) gripping the pistol grip, and left hand steadying the lens by firmly holding the tripod foot of the 150-450mm. I know this is against all normal tripod use practice, but it seems to allow me to quickly track the birds back and forth in a bush or tree, and use the trigger on the pistol grip to activate the shutter (both half- and full press) to get the shot. All this while the tripod takes the weight of the KP and 150-450mm lens.



????


Cheers

[Martin Stu]

cool shot

[pichaser]

Again my young but steadily growing Moonlight Grevillea is fulfilling its purpose - attracting bird life into my own back yard.

Attachment 533151

But reactions, please, to the following.

I have taken to using my tripodwith a rather dubious technique where I hand-hold the camera in position instead of locking down the tripod head when shooting birds. Why? Because no matter how hard I try, the lens drops or raises and the focus point drops from the head of the bird to the body. So I maintain position manually. But I have vibration reduction turned off because I am in my User3 (tripod) mode. Also, in spending time trying to lock the tripod head, I often lose the shot -the bird has flown!!!

I suspect I should keep vibration reduction on in this situation, because I have ended up with a number of not-sharp shots. and should drop shutter and open aperture to reduce ISO and noise. I am assuming that most of my not-sharp shots are due to camera movement, not AF failure.

For this shot, I turned the shake reduction on, while steadying the camera and lens. I got 4 out of 4 shots in focus and sharp. FYI, I am using a Vanguard GH 300T pistol grip ball head on the tripod, with right hand (obviously) gripping the pistol grip, and left hand steadying the lens by firmly holding the tripod foot of the 150-450mm. I know this is against all normal tripod use practice, but it seems to allow me to quickly track the birds back and forth in a bush or tree, and use the trigger on the pistol grip to activate the shutter (both half- and full press) to get the shot. All this while the tripod takes the weight of the KP and 150-450mm lens.



????


Cheers

Lovely !

[Sailor]

Nice one!

Jer

[bertwert]

Great shot - whatever you did seemed to work well