The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
With some time to kill before flights home from Chile last month, I scheduled a day trip to the coast for my group. We usually look for marine birds and hope to get lucky with an otter sighting or two, and it worked out pretty well this year. Among the species I was happy to finally photograph at closer range was the Blackish Oystercatcher… not to be confused with the Black Oystercatcher of North America, or the virtually identical Variable Oystercatcher of New Zealand.
A couple of them were flitting about in the tide snagging snails off the rocks. I dialed my settings in for flight shots, and caught this one just as it landed. Or perhaps it was saying hello.
Symmetry very often catches my eye, especially in birds. This time, it is partly hidden, adding mystery to symmetry. Technically, I am amazed at the speed of the AF, capturing a sharp bird that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Any hints about your settings? Thanking you in advance, Xavier
Xavier, I was simply trying to capture some sharp frames of the birds as they fought over space and hopped between rocks. 1/4000th and wide open is a bit extreme for this subject, but I really don’t like pushing the R5 bodies too high ISO-wise, and I was also combatting my own camera shake (generally shaky hands holding a 600mm f/4 lens in an awkward crouched position).
Thank you Max, for your rapid answer. I was referring to your AF settings (one shot vs continuous, which focus point, etc.). Those are the things that often make the difference between a sharp and a less sharp picture, especially with moving subjects. Again, congratulations on the picture itself.
Definitely rapid with Servo. As for the “cases” (which, frankly, I never quite felt comfortable with), I think with the R5II I’ve just defaulted to Auto. I will often use Animal Eye Detect with birds in flight, if the background is clean. Canon generally seems more sensitive than, say, Sony, when it comes to eye detection. This can be a positive in some respects, but it definitely wanders a bit more when there are a lot of textures in the frame. So I have two of my back buttons set up for “normal” and eye-detect AF.
