I was walking along the waterfront with my Nikon D7000 in aperture priority mode when I noticed this seagull about to take off not that far away from me. I didn’t have time to really change any settings on my camera so all I did was turn the command dial a few clicks to increase the ISO to make sure I at least had a fast enough shutter speed as it flew over my head. I ended up with ISO 560 and a shutter speed of 1/4000. Now, 1/4000th of a second should be more than enough to capture this bird – in fact, I would probably have plenty fine with the ISO at 200 which would have given me shutter speed at around 1/2000.
Or, even better, have switched to spot metering so the bird would have been better exposed and I could avoid having to play around with “fill light” etc. on my RAW file in post processing.
But in the heat of the moment I didn’t have time to think about my settings – and I don’t think the bird was willing to let me have another shot at it… I was just surprised that I managed to get the camera to my eye fast enough – and more surprised that the bird was actually in the viewfinder – and even more surprised that I managed to get a focus lock that fast!
What I learned from this photo is that maybe I should consider setting one of the User settings (U1 or U2) on my Nikon D7000 to “shutter priority – fast action”. That way I can set the camera to always give me a fast shutter speed while setting autofocus to continuous (AF-C) and maybe 9 focus points or just a single focus point. I don’t know yet.
By using one of the User settings, I don’t have to first rotate the mode dial to “S” (Shutter priority) and then select AF-C as autofocus mode, but simply switch it to U1 or U2 and it will load all the settings needed for a fast action shot.
Anyway, here’s the photo…
And here’s a 100% crop of the eyes (don’t mind the halo/ghosting around the head, it’s a screenshot).
I wonder what he/she is looking at?
Photo shot using:
It is definitely a seagull and judging from its eyes a demented one too! Great shot!
I haven’t seen a seagull in personal, but I really like that bird.
All in all I reckon you did a pretty good job. They may even call you quick draw seeing as how you didn’t have all that much time and still managed to pull off a pretty good shot.
Thanks Sire. I might have another two seagull photos for later this week. One of them being technical better than this, I think, and the 2nd being funnier – or at least luckier 🙂
Great job , great capture. ! It looks really cool. =)
wow. . .amazing ^_^
That’s pretty good and the 100% crop of the head is unbelievable.
That is a nice photo, great job! It is hard to take pictures of bird especially when they are flying.
Nice picture. You have very good camera.
Interesting fact for you – there is no such bird as the ‘Seagull’ – they are different species like herring gull etc… also even though it is illegal fancy restaurants will pay large amounts of money for gull eggs . See, you learn something new everyday. Great shot.
I had no idea. Thanks for sharing that info, Barry 🙂
I think this photo is not well enough to be a “Photo of the week”…
It would be much better if you publish this photo after editing with some photo editing software’s…..
Yep, it’s a seagull. Nice picture, did you mean to get it’s wings outstrectched or was it a lucky shot?
Definitely a seagull! I’ve always found them to be beautiful birds, absolutely graceful in flight. It’s too bad that their habits are so filthy! But on the whole, very beautiful. What a lucky shot with your camera!
Delena