Laughing Kookaburra takeoff

Another from my growing Kookaburra collection. This bird had just got a worm for lunch and was taking off for another hunting perch. I am just beginning to get the hang of this BIF caper but have a long way to go yet. I am wondering whether the 7D would get and hold focus better. About 50% crop.

50D 100-400 @ 180 1/2000 f5 iso250

Colin:

Very nice pose, angle in frame, exposure.
Light was fairly contrasty, but you did well on the bird.
This would have been even better against a more complimentary background. The grass has lots of areas of contrast/edges that are a bit distracting. I might also consider going to a bit more of a pano crop and eliminating the shadows above.
Do you have any good frames in the series where the bird is higher off the ground?

BIF is certainly a learning experience!

Randy

The first thing I thought was this would be cool if you had shot from a much lower angle, but not sure how the bg would look. The shadowy area at top is a bit distracting, maybe crop it out? Nevertheless, nice work capturing this bird in flight so well.

Thankyou for taking the time to comment- I really do learn something useful every time I post here

Captured nice and sharply, pretty harsh sunlight you were working with too by the looks of things so well done there as well. Just a quick question, are you using a filter (UV) on your lens? Or perhaps a lens protecter? The grass in the BG seems a bit strange

Paul Randall said:

Captured nice and sharply, pretty harsh sunlight you were working with too by the looks of things so well done there as well. Just a quick question, are you using a filter (UV) on your lens? Or perhaps a lens protecter? The grass in the BG seems a bit strange

Click to expand...

Yes Paul, I have a UV filter on purely for lens protection, makes me feel better at least. What is the effect that you see? I'll rip it off if it's doing damage to my images

The effect is very subtle but I can normally pick it a mile off. It creates a slightly crystalised effect on BGs that reflect a bit of light like blades of grass in full sun shown in your image.
It can also effect contrast in images where the sun is hitting the front element.
I used a UV for the first couple of months with my 400mm f5.6 and it had a considerable effect on a lot of my images. I would suggest taking it off and just using your lens hood for front element protection instead.

Here are a few links to images that had filter problems and my responses to them
http://http://www.birdingoz.com.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3532&p=28027&hilit=UV+filter+lens+protector#p28027
http://www.birdingoz.com.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2667&p=20771&hilit=UV+filter+lens+protector#p20771

Thanks Paul, I'll remove it and see the difference!