Streptopelia decaocto (Collared dove)

Streptopelia  decaocto, Family: Columbidae; common name: Collared  dove)

Collared doves are very common so one more picture is not something special. The three photos are shown here for some specific reasons. In the first picture, the fill in flash could (naturally) reach only the dove so it completely "isolated" it from the sky in the background. The natural orange color of the sky was enhanced a bit in Photoshop. In the second photo, a very high shutter speed was necessary to freeze the motion of the bird scratching its head with its foot. If you have seen them doing this move you know how fast it is done. To achieve this, the lens was used almost wide open. The photo at the bottom is another story. I recently acquired the Nikkor 500 mm f/4 which is a really bulky and heavy lens. After struggling for a week with tripods and monopods I found out that I could get sharp images at high shutter speeds (1/500 sec being the absolute minimum) but they were not the pictures I wanted. The supporting system was really limiting and I felt largely "immobilized". I then decided to handhold the lens and the camera (weighting more than 5 Kg) and use any available support (fence, tree, chair, table etc.) once I found something interesting, to reduce vibration which is extremely noticeable with this lens (effectively a 750 mm lens due to the cropping factor). When I saw this dove sitting on a street light I rested the lens on a fence, focused quickly and took three shots in rapid sequence while making minor adjustments in the focus to be sure one of them would be sharp enough. ISO setting was changed to 200 for those shots to allow for the maximum speed under these conditions.

Photos by George J. Reclos

Shooting Data:

Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 185 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/200 sec - f/7.1, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.

Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor AF 80-200 mm f/2.8 ED D @ 185 mm.
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/2500 sec - f/3.2, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode

Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor ED 500mm f/4 P
Sensitivity: ISO 200
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/1250 sec - f/4.5, Aperture priority mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL mode
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized.