![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/northern-harrier-7229-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-7229-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI’m a creature of habit and as a bird photographer that tendency sometimes doesn’t serve me well.<\/p>\n
I have a definite\u00a0routine I follow before I leave the house in the morning to go shooting. I set my camera and lens on the kitchen counter and format my memory\u00a0card, insert my (hopefully charged) battery and change my camera settings to what I think will be appropriate for the lighting conditions I’ll most likely face when I first arrive at my shooting site. Since I\u00a0nearly always try to be there right at dawn when the light is\u00a0soft and golden but\u00a0of low intensity my “go-to” settings are\u00a0f\/6.3 and ISO 800 (I shoot in aperture priority). I try to avoid going above ISO 800 whenever possible\u00a0(to keep the\u00a0digital noise down)\u00a0and\u00a0nearly always\u00a0that setting will give me sufficient\u00a0shutter speed to get even birds in flight sharp at that time of day.\u00a0I’ll go to higher ISO’s only\u00a0if I have to.<\/p>\n
But yesterday morning at\u00a0Bear River MBR things didn’t go as planned.<\/p>\n
My first shots were of\u00a0American White Pelicans in flight and with\u00a0large\u00a0white birds against a relatively bright sky I had\u00a0plenty of\u00a0shutter speed\u00a0to get them sharp so I left my camera settings as they were. But I\u00a0didn’t think about\u00a0something I should have… duh! It was a very smoky morning from fires up north so the light was more subdued than usual for that time of morning. I should have known that if I tried to shoot a bird in flight against a background significantly\u00a0darker than bright sky or water my shutter speed would drop dramatically.<\/p>\n
I tried and it did, to my dismay.<\/p>\n
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1\/640, f\/6.3, ISO 800,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Within minutes of photographing the pelicans this Northern Harrier came very close to me in gorgeous warm light\u00a0as it\u00a0hunted low and slow\u00a0over the vegetation.\u00a0Harriers never<\/em> come in that\u00a0close at Bear River\u00a0so I just didn’t expect it. I didn’t have time to change my settings so I just fired away and hoped for the best but the best didn’t happen.<\/p>\n Even at\u00a0the slow\u00a0shutter speed of 1\/640 the head, body and tail are\u00a0reasonably sharp because the hawk was moving\u00a0very slowly through the air but the wings and feet were moving faster and\u00a0are unacceptably soft. I took quite a few shots of this bird and this is the best I got so I was very disappointed.<\/p>\n If I’d been thinking (photographers do<\/em> need to think sometimes…) I’d have pre-tested my SS by taking some test shots of the vegetation. That’s something I\u00a0often do but I didn’t yesterday because I just assumed that ISO 800 would give me enough shutter speed\u00a0on a sunny morning, even that early. Usually it would but the effects of the smoke just slipped my mind.<\/p>\n Habits and assumptions bit me in the butt once again.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n Note\u00a0– Featuring a mediocre image on my blog is never something I’m comfortable with but one of my goals with this blog\u00a0is to be helpful to\u00a0bird photographers\u00a0just as\u00a0other photographers\u00a0have been helpful to me. We all need to be reminded of such things, especially me. <\/em><\/p>\n