![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barn-owl-0034-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0034-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nNot my best Barn Owl flight shots but for me some of my most exciting.<\/p>\n
For the first year or so after I purchased my first 500 f\/4 lens I simply stopped even attempting to photograph birds in flight because on those few occasions when I tried I had virtually no success. Flight shots are hard and I had no skills. But the winter of 2007-8 was an unusually cold one so Barn Owls were hunting in daylight which gave me motivation to learn.<\/p>\n
So that winter I spent endless early morning hours, often at Farmington Bay WMA, freezing my butt off as I stood in snow in front of my tripod and waited for Barn Owls to appear. Early on I had very few successes. Hell, I didn’t even know what camera settings to use for birds in flight and I’m not kidding.\u00a0 On those rare occasions when I was lucky enough to get an owl in my viewfinder the bird was usually soft, or over or underexposed, or had body parts clipped or cut off. I took more “air shots” than I care to remember.<\/p>\n
But eventually I had a few successes and I was immediately addicted to flight shots. Especially of Barn Owls but of any birds, really.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This series of two consecutive Barn Owl flight shots taken at Farmington on the morning of February 18, 2008 was one of my earliest successes. The owl suddenly appeared in front of a stand of phrags as it was hunting for voles. Back then I had great difficulty even finding a bird in flight in my viewfinder because learning to ‘aim’ a long lens quickly and accurately is tricky. And the longer the lens the trickier it gets so my 500mm lens was more than I could handle, at least at first. <\/span><\/p>\n But this owl wasn’t very close so I had time to find ‘him’ in my viewfinder and actually lock focus on him. <\/span>The molting owl isn’t very large in the frame but he’s sharp and I like his wing position.<\/p>\n Back then I was shooting with my Canon 40D which had a burst rate of only 6 frames per second. Comparing the position in the frame of the dark phrag head at lower left in this shot to…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n its position in the next shot in the burst gives me a visual representation of how slow my burst rate was back then. My current camera, a 7D Mark II, has a burst rate of 10 frames per second so if I’d taken this series with my 7DII the owl would have only traveled a little over half as far between shots. And these days my 7DII is considered to be relatively slow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hope my readers don’t mind me reminiscing about the ‘old days’ like this. In the nine days since I got my lens back from the repair shop I’ve only been out photographing birds twice, mostly due to inclement weather, so I haven’t been able to get many new photos to post.<\/p>\n Hopefully my recent miserable track record is about to improve.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not my best Barn Owl flight shots but for me some of my most exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/barn-owl-0035-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0035-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n