We photographed many of this species at one of the lodges on our South Africa tour in October. This was taken on a windy day and the wind whipped his tail back in the air behind him. They feed on nectar and were attracted to the lodge by sugar water feeders.
Canon 5D4 500F4 1/2500 F7.1, iso 800, full frame.
Wonderful pose, perch, and background. Nice light and color. I might like to see this at F8 or F9, a little more depth of field to get the tail feathers and focus. I wouldn’t expect a blur from 1/2500th.
Superb detail in the bird and perch with a great pose and overall composition, Nate. It’s hard to judge distances from this view, but it would really have been wonderful if you had the light to stop down enough to get that great tail in focus as well. Still a wonderful image.
Cool bird - various lengths of the rectices is amazing. Nice separation from the BG.
You could never have stopped down enough to get tail focus at this angle…
The bird is amazing… I am sure you have one with the tail more parallel to the camera.
Perch and BG are also very nice,
Hi Nate, very nice frame with a terrific heads on view. Nice perch and background. I agree with Dan that getting the tail sharp was not in the realm of stopping down more. Well done.
Thanks for your comments everyone! I think I would have had to go to at least F10 to get the tail in focus here and then the background would have been much busier.
