birds of prey

[coljshanks]

Hey everyone.
We had an interesting visit at our golf course today from a guy who is going to be using his pet hawk to hunt for rabbits, etc on the course.
I thought it would be great to try an get some photos of the bird in action. As I am kinda new to this I was wondering if anyone has experience in this or can offer some advice?
I use a Pentax Kx with two kit lenses.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Col.

[GeoffWessex]

By 'kit lenses' I assume you're referring to something in the mid-range, like 18-55mm or thereabouts. Great if you're really up close to the chap 'operating' the hawk, but that could be difficult - you might get in the way and put the bird off. So I'd suggest anything less than 200mm would not work, and ideally a 300mm, because you're going to have to work at a longer range from both the handler and the wabbits. You're also going to be shooting hand-held most of the time and that's where a 'fast' lens comes in - something that will have a maximum aperture of at least f/3.5. There are faster ones but they'll be expensive. Probably best to keep a reasonable distance and try to be within range of both the handler and the prey - but you won't really know where the prey is going to be. May take a little practice and several tries.

[Markulous]

+1 to above

It's one of those things that is pretty difficult until you've given it a few tries and then you wonder what all the fuss was about!

I'd recommend practicing first - I used to go for seagulls (ducks and pigeons are pretty good too) using an M42 400mm lens (so entirely manual) and learned all about tracking/panning as well as fast manual focus - even getting some OK shots! However, AF can be pretty successful (I'd recommend AI Servo or equivalent) - I set to AV (or TV if I'm after a particular amount of wing movement) with some exposure compensation to prevent blowing out the sky.

Of course a better venue would be to visit a hawking centre which does flying demos (most do) or one of the Red Kite feeding stations - and then you're practicing on the real thing!

Personally, I tend to use single shots, attempting to predict where the bird will be, rather than use 'machine gunning' burst mode and get much better results - as well as not have to plough through stacks of near identical images!

[wavemachine]

Good advice from Markulous there only thngs I will add is don't just go for in flight shots try and get some shots of the birds sat on a pirch or with the handler as it can be a nice bonus to the sequence and you can get more detail.

Also take a little time to observe the behaviour of the birds as this will help you predict where they are likely to go, each one has it's own chracteristics.

[GeoffWessex]

Just to add to the difficulty, if you want shots of the hawk getting the rabbit it's very likely to be against a darker background (certainly darker than the sky), so the differences in exposure between capturing the hawk in the air and then on the ground will also make life difficult..... then you can almost guarantee that the 'decisive moment' will take place just behind that hillock of grass.

[coljshanks]

Thanks guys.
I was thinking more of the bird in flight, taking off and landing rather than in the act, as it were.
I might try getting some shots at our local loch which has a good variety of bird life and take it from there.
Watch this space..................

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by Markulous

+1 to above

Personally, I tend to use single shots, attempting to predict where the bird will be, rather than use 'machine gunning' burst mode and get much better results - as well as not have to plough through stacks of near identical images!

Not easy to do with Swifts and Swallows, they change direction with just a slight twist of a wing or tail.