A Deepening Relationship

Birding has been a bit more routine in recent days. Although it felt like the Axe was hosting a few more Med Gulls than usual when I last checked on Thursday, the flood of Caspian Gulls has dried right up. Not even one. Sigh... So, in the absence of jammy good fortune to share, I thought I'd write something short and sweet about how things are going with the Nikon P900. In last Sunday's post about the American Herring Gull there is a nice image which Mike Morse kindly let me use. It's a long way from exhibition quality, but it is precisely the kind of photo that makes me want to carry a camera around. It is a brilliant record shot of a rarity, and exactly what I want to be able to get if a rare or scarce bird gives me the opportunity. But...

It's a flight shot.

And that's a big 'but'. Getting flight shots with my old Panasonic Lumix FZ38 bridge camera was a skill I never mastered. One or two fluky jobs, yes, but consistent success eluded me. However, the eye viewfinder on the Nikon is miles better than the Lumix, so I'm determined to persist with it. I visited the Axe Estuary on Thursday and took this...

Straight off the camera (800mm focal length, ISO 140, f5.6, 1/500 sec)

Edited version

Considering this was my first attempt with a setting I'm trialling, I'm pretty chuffed with that. But the camera was set to single exposure, in other words to capture one shot at a time, and I quickly realised there might be a lot more mileage in going for flight shots with multiple-exposure like a DSLR user would likely do. So that's what I tried today. First though, a nice 1st-winter Med Gull from Thursday...

Even the 1st-winters are smart as you like.

So this afternoon I went to Abbotsbury and walked along the beach E past the tank traps, then turned and headed W past East Bexington and on into West Bex country, most of it on shingle. What a slog. I was hoping to relocate a Glaucous Gull which Mike had seen at West Bexington late morning, but it was not to be. The sun was high in the sky, so the light was poor for offshore fly-by gulls. But I did get some pics of a Black-headed Gull using my new 'flight shot' setting. Here are three (from a burst of five) straight off the camera...

And an edited version of the final one...

1200mm focal length, ISO 400, f6.3, 1/500 sec

Again, if that was a record shot of something a bit more exciting I'd be well happy with it. Before we leave Black-headed Gulls, here's another example of a hand-held, full-zoom photo, cropped to about 75% of the original...

2000mm focal length, ISO 400, f6.5, 1/320 sec

And before we leave full zoom, here's another photo from today. The subject is once again the ubiquitous Stonechat. Afterwards I measured out the distance; it was exactly 50 full paces, so at least 50 yards. Not quite hand-held, as I supported the camera on a fence post...

Unedited. 2000mm focal length, ISO 220, f6.5, 1/500

For a small bird 50+ yards away, with a bridge camera, not too shabby.

Finally, it wasn't all birds today. Quite a few Portuguese Man-of-War were on the high-tide line, only the second time I've seen these creatures. They look a bit sad on the beach, with what would be a long string of tentacles reduced to a cyan blob beneath the gas-filled sail...

They were all pretty small too, none more than about 75mm long.

Anyway, I'll press on with the flight-shot trials. Assuming it goes okay I'll report back at a later date with details of what settings I've been using, and why.