Thanks for explaining thew trap focus. I've only done that manually from
inside a friends house - pre focus, of course - sitting near
tripod sipping coffee. But if Frank went for a beer where he is
he might not have a camera when he got back - Toronto's a big city.
ann
On 7/15/2011 07:57, Matthew Hunt wrote:
On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:35 AM, frank theriault
<knarftheria...@gmail.com> 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.
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