![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7783-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7783-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\nThe first flight sequence was anticipated and planned for but getting the second kingfisher in flight was nothing but reflexes and pure dumb luck.<\/p>\n
The adult male Kingfisher I’ve been photographing the last few months has finally brought some of his kids to the area. There are at least two young juveniles, possibly three. Strangely I’ve never seen the adult female, not a single time and I’ve been watching for her..<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is one of the juveniles soon after ‘he’ took off from the curved branch directly below him. The setting is so cluttered with branches and twigs I had little hope for a perched shot I like so I anticipated and planned for takeoff. This time things worked out because I quite like the photo, despite the clutter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This is the next shot in the burst and I like this one even more. The flight posture is very similar in both shots but I’m including them both, mainly because I’m tickled to get them both sharp. Because the kingfisher in the second shot is significantly closer to me and my depth of field is so narrow at this focal length (effectively 1120mm) the bird would typically be soft in the second photo.<\/p>\n Sometime down the road you may be seeing these two photos again because they may have helped me solve a mystery. It’s too complicated and involved to go into in this post so I’ll save it for another day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’m including the next photo just for the fun of it.<\/p>\n One of the most difficult photos for the bird photographer with a super telephoto lens is what I call a “hip shot”. Hip shots at those focal lengths are so difficult your chances of success approach zero. But when I’m in the field I can’t help attempting them just for the fun of it and because one day I just might get incredibly lucky. After all, pixels are cheap.<\/p>\n Hip shots as I define them are when a bird, usually in flight, doesn’t give me enough time to look through my viewfinder, locate the bird, lock focus on it and then push my shutter button. So I just point my 22″ long lens (with tc attached) in the general direction of the bird without looking through my viewfinder and hope I get the bird in frame and sharp.<\/p>\n Think of it as being similar to firing a rifle from your hip without raising it to your eye or aiming at your target, complicated by the fact that you not only have to hit your target, you have to lock focus on it first. Chances of success are virtually nil, especially with a bird in flight.<\/p>\n But only seconds after the photos above were taken I came very, very close.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I spotted one of the juveniles coming in from my left to land on an old stump below me. If I was going to get ‘him’ in flight or during landing I had no time to locate him in my viewfinder so I attempted a hip shot as defined above. I just pointed my lens and pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n I was flabbergasted when I saw that I almost succeeded. The young kingfisher was centered in the frame and darn near sharp. I even caught him in a pre-landing pose that I like a lot. Getting him this sharp with the background so close to him only adds to the difficulty of the shot.<\/p>\n He isn’t quite sharp enough for me to use this photo for any purpose other than this post but getting the shot as good as I did made my day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As an afterthought I decided to include this photo that shows where he landed. Some of the stump at the left of this photo can be seen on the right side of the previous photo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, near successes like that with nearly impossible shots can please me almost as much as getting an easier but truly great shot. Maybe you have to be a bird photographer to understand…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first flight sequence was anticipated and planned for but getting the second kingfisher in flight was nothing but reflexes and pure dumb luck.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7784-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7784-ron-dudley\\"")
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