Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

Scenic Focus Stack 1

So this is a stack of 2 blended in Photoshop. Everything I shot was handheld. I liked this, but looking at it after the fact I regret the placement of those 2 taller bare bushes on the left that extend into the far background detail. It was nice to find some final fall colors here though for sure.

Scenic Pond

Nothing too special, but a good indicator of what the conditions were like. I spent the best light of the day on the loop road where the birds mostly weren't. You can see a few very small in tis image, but the subject is more the trees and hills.

Lone Fall Tree

This is also a focus stack of 2 - not sure it was required. I had to shoot over some tall brush to get this, so the framing was a bit challenging.

So Many of These...

So when I get to the serious bird areas, I decided to shoot using electronic shutter, partially to be silent and not disturb other photographers and birds and partially to capture that 'magic moment'. Yikes. I have an uncountable number of images of many of the poses. All look very similar. Who knows, I COULD have a perfectly posed and focused one in there I still haven't looked at. I think 20fps is strictly for maybe fast action shooting. All of these suffered from lots of missed focus, too busy, too many birds in frame (could have been even closer or had an even longer lens) and the fact that the f/7.1 aperture just doesn't quite give enough separation to the subject and the background in many instances.

Bad BIF Shots

Also way too many of these. Impressive to see how the camera can catch focus, but the image has birds too small, in some cases shutter speeds too slow (from alternating between ground shooting and sky shooting) and the usual 'the birds are now flying away - you missed the shot' posing. No keepers here...

Once in a While...

An image that at least focused on the bird. Not sure why the AF was struggling as much as it did. I think I have seen the AF and especially the eyeAF of the R5 do better. Once again though, still too cluttered (the viewer has to wonder what the subject is) and a bad combo of not enough DOF to bring all birds into focus but too much DOF to blur out the distracting backgrounds. LOTS of these shots as well.

Missed AF example

trying to focus ion the birds looking left but apparently caught the background brush instead. Uncountable number of these, due to 20fps...

Missed Opportunity

I think this could have been cool. Big flocks of Red-Winged Blackbirds (I presume anyway) coming in for a landing. Once again, had too slow shutter speed when this happened form shooting birds on the ground a moment before. So all OOF, but wanted to post so you could appreciate all the activity going on at this place! A smart approach would have been to pick either BIF shooting or on the ground shooting and stick with it for a while I suppose. But I was frankly overwhelmed with all the activity I guess.

Call Air Traffic Control!

It was hard to know where to point the camera in the park, especially at end of day in the area aptly called the 'flight deck'. After a number of so-so images of birds on the ground I was back to playing with birds in flight, and eventually racked the zoom all the way to the wide end to get a wider aperture. The sun was almost down and the sky colors here are slightly accentuated, as is the foreground brightness to just show a few of the many birds also on the ground.