More lazy birding
My window with a view. Office in the trees. Whatever. Arm-chair birding, lazy-birding. Whatever. New visitor captured today while trying to do some data recovery to a failed and corrupted storage-drive….The data recovery process looks like a possibility, just need to get the right tools [decide which software to use]. In the mean time, I’ve started to catalog all archived photo directories from each storage-drive and have started to back these up in batches to DVDs. its going to be a long and arduous process, but just has to be done!
Chestnut-tailed Starling [Sturnun malabaricus]
Nikon D3 helps gets the picture: The fast AF tracking on the D3 really works [when one figures out how to get it to work well for ones shooting style] and today I did a fast burst of 10 frames and all are in crisp sharp focus on the eye or the bird. Lovely! There was a pair of Starlings, but I knew they would not stay too long, and so I just let it rip. For bird photography, I find that the concentrated 9-points or at most the 21-points focus tracking pattern more effective than the highly acclaimed 51 points AF focus points setting ["Moose" Peterson recommendation]. And, BTW I find the D3’s infamous 51 points 3D AF tracking completely useless! Also, the track-wheel to move the central focus point can be clicked diagonally in one click instead of having to do 2 clicks [like one click up [or down] and one click to the left [or right] – thus saving a big amount of time. The burst of 10 frames was done in a few seconds, and the bird was gone… the combo of fast AF, accurate focus tracking, and the ability to shift the central/main focus point freely certainly helped me get the photo above.
I like that it is leaping right down and looking out that makes it look pretty.
Yes, it is a pretty looking bird. Did you see the other photo of the Starling? In
this pic you can see it has a lovely blue beak.