25th May 2010: Juru with Canon 1D Mark 2

I bought a 2nd hand Canon 1D Mark 2 camera body yesterday, chiefly for its autofocus capabilities (it has a 45-point Autofocus area, as opposed to my 40D, which has only 9 focus points).

Today I took it out to see how well it would cope with flying bee-eaters against a busy background! As it turned out, this was being a tad ambitious, as the AF couldn't cope any better with the challenge than my 40D, so I ended up resorting to manually focusing! The 8.3 frames per second was fun, but meant I soon started filling up my CF card! Here are some of the better efforts.




















































































All the bee-eaters today were Blue-throated apart from this solitary Chestnut-headed!





I got a few fortuitous shots of a fly-by Emerald Dove. They weren't particularly sharp, but it's not often you get chance to photograph an Emerald Dove in flight, in good light, and a bright adult male into the bargain! At least you can see the curious double-banded rump pattern.

Early days with the camera. I know from past experience that it will take a few months' use before I start getting the best out of it. In the meantime I think I'll need to do some arm exercises - I certainly felt the extra weight today!