Originally posted by biz-engineer
Has zero value, I can shoot thousands of those all in perfect focus with my Pentax K1, it's very easy. I shot those with the DFA24-70 on the coast in Brittany. Pentax works well for birds in the sky, usually it's easy to the camera to focus when there is not detail in the background.
Then specify that it has zero value because it's easy to shoot BIF against sky. This is a valid argument if:
- you shoot large birds with predictable AF
- you compare shooting birds against blue sky to shooting birds against a busy background
If you like to test your af with birds against blue sky, try and catch a bee eater or a swallow at 600mm and see the difference in keeper rate between shooting large birds like seaguls or duks (which have predictable flight) and small birds with fast and unpredictable flight.
Originally posted by biz-engineer
a keeper is not a keeper because the subject is in focus, if a keeper was a keeper every time a photo is in focus we would have so many keepers that we wouldn't know what to do with them.
A keeper image is (in my opinion) the best image from a burst of in focus images. Shooting BIF with slow fps cameras means that you will have a lag between shots even if those images are all in focus. This means that from a burst you may end up with no keeper image in which the wings for example are in perfect position.
Look at the image from below. Sorry for the low quality, it was downloaded from my Facebook page. The kingfisher is known as one of the most demanding birds to photograph. It's very small and extremely fast. It's hard to photograph this bird in action even from a good hide. It's the bird that made me love shooting wildlife and BIF. Now imagine the shooting conditions that I had when I took this image. I was on a small fishing boat, covered with branches, lots of boats were passing near us and the waves from those boats made our boat to move a lot. I was using a 300mm f2.8L lens with 2xTC (600mm) handheld because tripod was out of question on a moving boat. This bird was almost imposible to follow because of the waves, the size of the bird and because I couldn't see it coming from far away due to existing conditions. I knew the bird is coming to the nest from a certain direction by listening. This bird has a sound that I can recognise anytime no matter how many birds are singing in the same time. When the birds was in the frame, I got the chance to take a burst of 7 images using all the skills and techinques that I know. I had 5 images in focus, but in this one the wings and the position were the best. I had the af-c set for tracking and I customised the af for that particular shooting condition (I set the camera to ignore obstacles and to prioritize chaotic movement). Do you think that a camera with slow fps and slow tracking capabilities would have helped me to take this shot? I can assure you that even 5D Mark IV struggled to keep up with this little bird despite the complex af system and 7fps.
Or take this example from below. The images ware taken with 6D which has 4 fps. This is a burst of 2 images. See where the horse is in the second image? If I would have had a camera with 7-10fps, I would have had other images to choose from between these 2 shots. But the slow fps of my camera didn't allowed me to have the chance to select a better image. So, you may recommend K1 for BIF. I don't and I told you a few reasons.

---------- Post added 09-19-18 at 02:29 PM ----------
Originally posted by normhead
Well good to see Dan and Ian are here. Two guys that can help with the transition. I don't always agree with their perspective, but if you are going to switch those two will get you pointed in the right direction.

I don't want to make anyone to switch or to help with the transition. I just presented my impressions based on the fact that I really love shooting BIF. And maybe you saw that I told him that:
- for stationary subjects there is no need to switch
- K1 will provide great images with lots of details
- a faster lens than DA* 300mm may be a solution if BIF is not that important as it is to me.
Last edited by Dan Rentea; 09-19-2018 at 07:34 AM.