Originally posted by aki This was taken the same day and the same hour with f8 , a little bit less iso but different light and position . Like more the another pic .
Both shots are pretty good.
When I finally got my K3 iii and the 150-450mm zoom (I already owned the KP and still do), I engaged a professional photographer/photography tutor for a day.
One of the things he pointed out re shooting birds in flight was that usually, your distance from the subject already provided good depth of field, so shutting down the aperture was not necessary. Upping the shutter speed was more important. I have an old school friend in Melbourne who has taken some amazing BIF shots of kites, etc and I have noticed his shutter speeds for most of these shots has been varying between 1/2000s to even 1/4000s.
My aperture choice for these shots is generally F5.6 to F6.3, maybe going to F7.1 if I think the bird is closer. I have been setting the ISO to float between 100 to around 2500 to 4000.
(I am almost always shooting in TaV mode.)
I also use Select (Medium) Continuous for the autofocus when shooting BIFs.
On the other hand, for perched birds, provided I am 7 metres or closer, I use spot focus, F8 or smaller (depending on the lighting, of course) and also try to keep the ISO down, especially if the bird is in shade. But when hand-holding the 150-450mm, I still try to keep the shutter speed as high as possible, to assist the Shake Reduction in fighting camera movement.
I must add the qualifier that the above is always my intention: sometimes the old brain forgets to switch settings as my subjects change from in flight to perched or still!!!!!
I have saved my preferred settings to User1 and User2 custom settings for quick switching between all these settings.
I have a small build and am 78 yrs old, so handling the 150-450mm for prolonged periods gets to be a challenge.
I have found the more I attempt BIF shots, the more my keeper to discard ratio improves. I must admit that since buying the K3 iii, the poor old KP stays on the back burner a lot.