Hoodie and Woodie...

[Chenango Dave]

Sorry I haven't been on lately - been busy around the house and what not. You guys have all got some great pics posted but I haven't had the time to reply (dam dial up here at home.). Heres a couple pics from yesterday morning - Gonna get out again and sit on the river Friday morning. Hopefully the eagles will offer a shot or two , but I have just as much fun watching the ducks. Must have seen over 150 but most of them were before there was enough light to shoot.

And a woodie before there waas any good light..

Better pics after this weekend I hope.

 

[FredtheGad]

Awesome hoodie,

them sure are pretty birds but tablefare is like eating a west coast mackrel

Thanks for sharing the pic

 

[DEERSLAM]

Beautiful birds.

 

[Chenango Dave]

Thanks Deerslam and FredtheGad. They are a little noisey - Hope to do better this weekend.

 

[clutchkiller]

I think the hooded mergansers are one of the best looking ducks, and so are the wood ducks. I haven't seen a single wood duck around... Good job getting both of them!

If you're not trying to get shot's of them flying... try lowering your ISO down to about 500 or 400 (even better @ 400), and you should be able to get a good shot of them without motion blur or too much noise with a shutter speed around 1/200th of a sec. or higher.

 

[Chenango Dave]

Thanks Paul - I had ISO set to 600 cause it was cloudy out and I was out there before it was even light out yet. I usually try and set it to 200 or 400 but thought I'd try it at 600 and see how they came out - definately increased the noise. I also tried aperature priority starting out at f/2.8 and as it got lighter I kept stoppin it down till I was at f/5.6 and shutter speed at 1/200- the exposure meter was still reading good. At this point I should have set the ISO back down (but didn't). I'm still in the learning process - so just trying different settings is teaching me a lot.

 

[clutchkiller]

LOL, don't feel bad about forgetting to turn down your ISO... I forget all the time. I only watch my exposure meter when I make adjustments, sometimes I'll have my shutter speed all the way up to 1/8000th of a sec. and not realize it (because I have my ISO too high)

I'm so used to it being cloudy here all the time, so on a nice sunny day I have a real hard time getting a god exposure.