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Great Egret. St Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine FL

I had a lot of fun experimenting with Sports Mode for flight shots at the St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery in Florida. A lot of fun, and, of course, a lot of potential frustration. I was shooting side by side, most often, with folks with DSLRs and medium long lenses…and I could hear the machine gun fire of their shutters as they tracked birds across the open gap above the boardwalk. I was limited to my 7 frames each time I got a bird in focus, which was not on every pass. Still, I suspect that when all is said and done, and the post processing dust settled, that I got as many keepers as anyone on the boardwalk…and even if I did not…the number I did manage was totally satisfying. And I did have enough faith in the camera and my own skill to ward off both frustration and DSLR envy on the boardwalk. 🙂 This bird is bringing in nesting material.

This shot is cropped only slightly, for composition, and was taken hand held in Sports Mode on the Nikon P900 at 600mm equivalent field of view. The birds are close at the rookery and moving fast, so, when trying to catch birds in flight, shorter focal lengths are called for. You would never even find the bird in motion at the long end of the zoom. 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f5.

Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.

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