After giving up on autofocus with motion trigger yesterday, I inadvertently conducted another autofocus test today. I forgot to turn off autofocus after I did my prefocus. I did make a conscious decision to turn on high-speed burst, which fires off eight images in less than a second. I thought I would get more droplets in the air as the flicker's bill comes up out of the water, and I think it worked. Burst speed is one area where the Canon 1D Mark II #9 is actually superior to my two newer DSLRs, which are about two frames per second slower. I ended up with almost 700 images, 75% of which were out of focus and could be deleted immediately. Not all of the other 25% were perfectly focused, but many of them were. As I've said before, the 1D's job is to soak up shutter actuations so my newer cameras don't have to. In a semi-controlled environment with fairly big birds and a sharp new lens, 2004 technology and 8 megapixels is usually good enough. (It's worth remembering that the original of my most famous wildlife image is only 4 megapixels because the 1D Mark II showed after I left on my trip to Maine.) It doesn't cost anything except time to wade through 700 digital images to find two good ones. (Or in the case of the trail camera, 40,000 to find two good ones.) As someone who grew up with film, I'm still getting used to that, even after 20 years.
In the past 10 days, I've gotten more than 200 publishable images similar to this one, the flicker perched on the left side of the birdbath getting a drink. I started wondering what path the flicker takes to get to the bath. Does it walk in from the tall grass on the other side of the fence, or does it fly in? Rather than collecting hundreds of "crow on a rock" images again today, I took the Gardepro T5CF #14 and spiked it into the lawn between the fence and the bath to try to get the answer.
The flicker made two appearances on the 1D today, none on the Gardepro. So apparently it does not walk in a direct line from the fence to the bath. Even though I have hundreds of flicker images, I have actually seen the flicker only twice. The second time was today. I did not see it arrive, but when it left it was via the air. I'll leave the Gardepro stuck into the lawn for another day to see whatever there is to see. Looking back at previous days, on the 16th there is an image that seems to show the flicker arriving by air, but it is out of focus and not postable.
Here are a couple other birds that came by the bath today, a robin and a magpie. The eye of the magpie is blurred, but it is not out of focus. It's motion blur. It was late in the day and shutter speed was only 1/160. At ISO 250 and f/8, shutter speed in good light is around 1/1,000, which might have frozen that motion blur. The 1D is not as good as the newer cameras at high ISO, and in any event does not have automatic ISO adjustment, so this is one of those tradeoffs for soaking up those actuations. I'll just shoot when there is good light.
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