Rice Rocket!

[Tom Wilson]

Man these ducks are fast! Again, this is another nemesis shot for me. Has anyonje else noticed the amount of BW Teal, and Shoveler's that are around the metro area this year?

Tom Wilson

[Dbl]

That is impressive considering how fast they are. I have a hard time hitting one with a shotgun, let alone a camera. Really that is tack sharp. What shutter speed did you need on that? Based on the light I'm thinking you were around 1/2000s to 1/3000s ISO 400?

[Tom Wilson]

ISO 400

F 6.3

1/1000 of a second.

300mm F4 with 1.4x tele (effective length 630mm)

D2X in HSC mode

roughly 5% cropped from left side for composition

Tom W

[Dbl]

Thanks Tom, thats good info for those of us that haven't done much with flying ducks. I am to used to freezing the action on things like, baseballs, and baseball bats, etc. Teal are so darn fast I figured it would take a higher shutter speed.

I have noticed more ducks of all types around this spring. Maybe it has to do with all the water? Not sure I remember seeing that much water from the air in many years.

[Steve Foss]

Nice shot, Tom. Good capture.

Dbl: The issue with fast ducks isn't necessarily shutter speed, but whether the shooter can get the focus point on the duck and track it fast enough before the duck flies out of distance or goes past and all you have is a butt to shoot. Because you're tracking the duck and it stays in roughly the same place in your frame, a relatively slow shutter can be used. Of course, if it's hard to get that duck in the frame and you don't have image stabilization, you need all the shutter speed you can get. It's not easy to track fast ducks in flight. It takes practice, and Tom is quite good at it.