On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:35 AM, frank theriault <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks! I believe they're American Goldfinches. I've become quite > obsessed with getting a close-up of them, but so far this year that's > not happening (they're shy little devils and my longest lens is > 200mm). Have you ever played around with trap focus? I've had some decent luck using it to catch birds that would be wary of my approach: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coneslayer/2653380701/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/coneslayer/2617086594/ The procedure requires a manual-focus lens (I use a Vivitar 200/3.5), and a wired remote shutter release. On my K10D, the procedure is basically this: Set the camera AF mode to AF-S, and the drive mode to continuous fire. With the camera on a tripod, compose the shot of the empty perch where you expect the bird to land. Set the AF to use a single focusing point. Select a point that will be occupied by the bird when it lands, and focus on that point (typically by focusing on the perch, since focusing on empty space is hard) Until the bird arrives, there should be nothing in focus at that point, just the distant background. Set the exposure. Connect the shutter release cable, and lock it down (so that the shutter button is being held continuously). Go have a beer. When a bird lands, the camera will detect that there's something in focus at the selected AF point, and will fire continuously until the bird leaves. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
