Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Bats!

Man oh man, are these ever hard little guys to shoot! I took about 100 pictures of them swooping over our yard this evening and these were the three best shots. Taken with the 70-200 f2.8L IS on the 5DMKII. These are 100% crops and I fooled with the brightness and contrast just a little bit in Photoshop. Maybe I ought to try fill flash next time to see if I can catch more detail.



7 comments:

DB said...

Nice catch! Those little buggers are quick!

lauriek said...

Those are pretty good considering the lens, you could obviously do with something longer, perhaps think about adding a 1.4x or 2x teleconvertor to your setup... Are you going to keep that 5DII then? :)

Peter Atwood said...

Thanks for looking and the nice comments. :)

Laurie, I'll try again with the 100-400 F4 IS with both the 1.4x and 2x teleconverters. I was thinking the 2.8 would serve me better in the low light but in truth the AF was hunting all over the place anyway so I might as well go to the Bazooka even though I will lose several stops.

vegassprky said...

Bats? They look giant flying prehistoric creatures! Good job of capuring these shots without target following radar!?!? Keep it up!:)

lauriek said...

Peter, bump up the ISO a bit to compensate for the lens speed you'll lose going out to 400/4... If you're shooting APS-C then you should be able to shoot ISO800 without too much noise, if you're still using that 5DII then 1600/3200 should be do-able!

Peter Atwood said...

Thanks Laurie, I will do it. It's going to be a full moon tonight so I may try for some moon shots as well if clouds permit.

Peter Atwood said...

Yes, the 5DMKII can go way high on the ISO with no problem. But maybe I ought to consider using the cropped T1i here instead...