There's More Than One Way to Skin a Duck in Flight

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This image was created on 22 May 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Working from the driver’s seat of my SUV, I used the BLUBB-supported Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 2.0x Teleconverter and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 2500. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/2500 second at f/8 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was perfect. AWB at 7:49:28am on a sunny morning with just a hint of a cloud in the eastern sky. Zone/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version. Image #1: Black-bellied Whistling Duck — incoming flight

Nearly Impossible

Shooting flight off the BLUBB at 1200mm is nearly impossible. When I saw the incoming duck, I struggled getting the bird in the middle of the frame. I saw that I was clipping the wings with most of the images. So I released the shutter button, re-gripped the lens, re-acquire focus, and got a few decent images. Image #1 above was the best of the lost.

Image #1 Flight Shooting Statistics for 1200mm off the BLUBB

Degree of Difficulty: 9+ out of 10.

Chance of Sharpness Success with the a9 iii: 80%

Chance of Sharpness Success with the a1: 10%

This image was created on 23 May 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Standing at full height, I used the Robus RC-5558 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 1250. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/3200 second at f/5.6 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was dead-solid perfect. AWB at 7:16:38am on a clear sunny morning. Zone/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a larger, sharper version. Image #2: Black-bellied Whistling Duck — wings fully down flight

Plan B

As there have been about 30 Black-bellied Whistling Ducks flying in to the left of the pier each morning, I decided to get out of the car and set up the tripod with the 600mm f/4 and the 1.4X TC with the a9 iii. I took off my shirt to catch some vitamin D and took off my socks while standing on the “beach” sand to do some grounding.

I set the shutter speed to 1/3200 second early on and went to 1/4000 sec. I started at ISO 1600 early on and wound up at ISO 1000. Most of the images were made at +2 off the low blue sky. I set the Limit Range Switch to Not Full for faster initial focusing acquisition and moved the Direct Manual Focusing switch to ON so that I could pre-focus manually. I had only a few good chances on the whistling ducks in flight.

Image #2: Flight Shooting Statistics/840mm off the tripod with the Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro.

Degree of Difficulty: 6 out of 10 for relatively unskilled folks like me: 6 out of 10.

Degree of Difficulty for skilled folks on a tripod with the same gear: 3 out of ten.

Degree of Difficulty for skilled folks handholding at 840mm: 1 out of ten.

Chance of Sharpness Success with the a9 iii: 98%

Chance of Sharpness Success with the a1: 60%

By 8am, the flight action petered out, so I drove around looking for different subjects — best was an osprey with a whole fish perched by its nest (851 images).

At 8:30am I headed back to the sand beach. As expected, at least another two dozen whistling ducks had flown in while I was gone.

High Level Question

Why?

Plan C

Stay tuned to learn of my new strategy (provided that the east wind and sunny skies continue).

Typos

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