{"id":29566,"date":"2015-02-15T06:13:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T13:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29566"},"modified":"2015-02-15T06:13:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T13:13:49","slug":"an-entire-magpie-landing-sequence-at-10-frames-per-second","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/15\/an-entire-magpie-landing-sequence-at-10-frames-per-second\/","title":{"rendered":"An Entire Magpie Landing Sequence At 10 Frames Per Second"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photographing a bird as it lands is much more difficult than when it is taking off.<\/p>\n

In the past I’ve occasionally (very occasionally)\u00a0been able to get a single frame or two of a landing bird, usually by anticipating its perch and pre-focusing on it. But nine days ago on Antelope Island I was finally able to lock on to a bird in flight and stay locked on as it landed.\u00a0And as a bonus I didn’t clip or cut off any body parts in the process.<\/p>\n

Each of these eight images\u00a0is in a sequence without any “skips”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The magpies on the island have been building nests sporadically for almost two weeks now.\u00a0This bird was coming in to land on the nest bush when I first locked on and began the burst.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the soon-to-be perch is barely out of frame to the left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Now the perch is in view. I was slightly surprised that at this point the magpie hadn’t already\u00a0flared its tail but I suspect that its airspeed wasn’t fast enough to make it necessary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Here the tail did flare a little but just for an instant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The feet reached out to grab the perch…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and we have contact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The magpie begins to fold its wings…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and settles on its perch. But only for a moment.\u00a0And when it took off, you guessed it – I clipped one of its wings on both take-off shots.<\/p>\n

All this happened very quickly.\u00a0 At the 10 frames\/sec\u00a0burst rate of my Canon 7D Mark II the entire sequence took only .8 sec.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these are great shots.\u00a0 The featureless background isn’t my favorite (although it probably helped me to maintain focus on the bird) and I don’t think the bright perch\u00a0 is particularly attractive. But for me it was an accomplishment of note to get the entire landing sequence so I had to “crow” about it a little (sorry about that but at least both crows and magpies are corvids…).<\/p>\n

I think I’ll try for these sequences more often in the future.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographing a bird as it lands is much more difficult than when it is taking off.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6,334,363],"tags":[31,57,490,2348,146,579,1307,610,311],"class_list":["post-29566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-burst-rate","tag-canon-7d-mark-ii","tag-flight","tag-landing","tag-nest-building","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/black-billed-magpie-1456-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7GS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}