Ready to take off

Technical Info: D300s using 70-300mm lens @ 270mm, f/8 for 1/750 sec with +1/3 EV

Here is the first shot from my D300s…well not exactly THE first shot, but you get the point. This is the humming bird that was fighting with a sparrow last week. Little did I know the reason, but today it was very clear why they were pecking at each other so much. This one was claiming its territory to house its nest and it sure did win the fight as it has its nest now. The nest is still getting some finishing touches to it, but its pretty close to completion.

Last year when we moved to this apartment, the same tree had another nest of humming bird. This year too, the same tree has been chosen, but the view from my balcony is not that clear and this makes it really difficult to get a shot. The nest is pretty much in the shade and also the view has too many obstacles for the auto-focus to work correctly.

When I got the camera out, it already had a high ISO on it due to my previous setting. Thanks to D300s noise performance, its no longer a worry 😉 Also the body has very high fps compared to d90, so that helps too. The only work I had to do was to get the focus right. Since auto-focus wasn’t doing good, switched to manual mode, took a test shot and set the right shutter speed, keeping it short enough to avoid any kind of shake. It needed a boost in EV compensation to expose it right. While I was fiddling with the buttons and dials on the camera, the bird came home and I completely forgot about changing my aperture. If I had managed to open up the aperture, then I would have got a nice shallow dept-of-field, but for now I’ll have to live with f8 for this shot and remember to change it for next attempt.