Today I went to my local forestry centre who do Golden Eagle photography days - this was a gift bought from Groupon for a mere £30 which turned out to be a great value purchase!
The day involved watching a short video/slide show of inspirational photographs followed by a morning session where the handlers simply took out the birds and held them while we all took photographs. Then after lunch we went back out and the handlers dragged rabbit lures across the ground while the Eagles swooped down and took the 'prey' which made for some great action shot opportunities. Then we finished off by holding the birds ourselves and taking a few pictures of that.
As I was unsure what the day was going to involve, I took along my two longest lenses and my ultra-wide lens (as it is my fastest).
Upon seeing the example shots I immediately decided I was not going to have a great day photography-wise, I had left behind my kit lens which has limited zoom but fast autofocus, and my two longer lenses had to be used in manual focus really (the Sony SAL-55200-2 does autofocus but VERY slowly).
As it turned out I was greatly mistaken, the SAL-55200-2 was the perfect lens for the job, great enough zoom to get close up shots but also crystal clear focusing (my manual focus skills were put to the test but came out just fine). I never used the Minolta lens at all and put the ultra wide lens on briefly only for it's autofocus features whilst taking snaps of us holding the eagles.
I managed to get some really great close up images of the eagles heads in fine focus, some facing the camera images with their eyes in great focus (golden rule) and some great location shots when the eagles sat happily on branches, rocks and stumps throughout the forest, lake and bridge settings.
When it came to the afternoon and getting in-flight shots I didn't fare quite so well, I decided the best option was to focus on a specific point, set to sports mode, and as the eagle flew towards that point I just snapped away. It resulted in a lot of photos, in which the eagle flew from out-of-focus to in-focus to out-of-focus again as it passed through the point I had focused upon. The result was that I did manage to get a few in focus shots so I was happy with that. We had very limited opportunities and on one occasion my camera went into battery saver mode just as the bird took off - should I do this again I'd have got a few more good shots I think.
All in all it was a great day and great to get back into a bit of photography!
A few of my favourite pictures are below, the rest are available on my Flickr page: Flickr
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| Hooded Golden Eagle |
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| Eyes of prey |
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| Swooping in to catch prey |
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