Getting there..............slowly!

[Oneputt]

Trying to catch the birds flying past my balcony is very frustrating. When they afre close enough they are moving very quickly, and their direction is variable. Sliderr has his search for the perfect dragonfly and I have mine.

[Manta]

These are great John!

[Zeeke]

Brilliant John, if only the horizon was straight for the seagull , thats a great shot!!

Tim

[Nicole]

Good job John. Seagulls are good to practice on. I find pelicans and swans also good because they aren't as fast. Not a bad spot to practice from though!

[jben_net]

Great shots - love the sense of freedom.

Just for interests sake, an easy way to fix the horizon so that it's straight, open your image in photoshop, and select your ruler tool. Draw the ruler along the unlevel horizon. Then go to rotate image, arbitary. From here there will be a automatic number of degrees. Hit ok and hey presto, your image has been rotated enough to make your horizon straight. Then obviously crop your image in a bit, to avoid the white background from becoming part of your composition.

[Finch]

Hi John,

Good attempt at flying shots. White-faced Heron is quite good but a little soft - was it cropped much?

Seagull is my favoutite and works well.

Nice work

Cheers

Michael

ps - crooked horizon in seagull shot can be changed in Photoshop

[Oneputt]

I never worry about things like horizons Is this better?

[big pix]

John great capture...... but staying so close to the fridge is good, as you will never go thirsty........ but you will have to get out more.........

[Matt. K]

John
She's a real lady! She flys with her knees together!

[Oneputt]

My ambition is to get a pelican at eye level, have come close a couple of times. However when they do it my camera is usually somewhere else

[Slider]

John, you sure have the perfect bird "hide".

Well done BTW. I had a go at some Corellas yesterday and this was the only one that got close. Would have been great to have nailed it Wasn't going to post it but it does show how good your's are.

[wendellt]

John

skillful work. Birdy told me once if your using the 70-200VR with the D2x you should go into the csm menues and switch focus tracking off sometimes that can cause missfocus, i am assuming here you used the 70-200

[Oneputt]

You are right Wendell the 70-200VR it is. I will have a look at Birddogs suggestion and see if it works. Ta.

[avkomp]

the seagull shot is sharp where it counts.

Seagulls are great practice for flight shots.
looks a little hot to me.
I quite often use centre weighted metering for bird photography and compensate as necessary. Birds are quite often a smaller component in the frame than say a landscape.

As far as the d2x and how its auto focus works (together with suggested modes for different situations, this article:
http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/nikon_articles/body/multi-cam2000_af/multi-cam_2000_9.html

this link above covers the part which mentions the lock on feature.
By all means go back to the intro and read the whole article from the beginning as it is quite detailed and well worth a read

not sure if this article has been mentioned before.

Steve