Since publishing my initial E-M1X swallows in flight article, I’ve tested the Olympus OM-D E-M1X with this subject matter a couple of additional times. This article shares three short AF-C runs of swallow in-flight altercations.

These types of interactions happen in little more than a blink of an eye, then disappear. I was fortunate to have three very brief opportunities over the past couple of days to capture these swallow in-flight altercations. Luckily my reflexes were pretty quick and the E-M1X was up to the task. The M.Zuiko 40-150 mm f/2.8 with the 1.4X teleconverter performed well, especially given the severe crops used on the images in this article.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

All of the AF-C runs in this article were captured hand-held using a frame rate of 10 fps. I used a 5×5 auto-focus grid. The images displayed are the result of very severe cropping. The original images of the first two sets of images were cropped to 2500 pixels in width. They were then resized to 1200 pixels for web use.

In this first series of images a swallow has emerged from a nesting box to chase away an intruder.

On the same day I also had the opportunity to capture another swallow in-flight altercation. This time it was against a monochromatic, cloudy sky. The lighting wasn’t ideal from auto-focus and exposure perspectives. It did help to highlight the swallows nicely.

The images in the final photo set in this article are composed of tight, random crops. These were then resized to 1200 pixels for web use.

While it would have been better if I had been using a longer focal length lens, being able to capture these swallow in-flight altercations was still a joy!

Technical Note:
All photographs in this article were captured using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All of the photographs displayed in this article were produced from RAW files using my standard process.

Use of Olympus Loaner Equipment
All of the photographs in this article were captured using Olympus Loaner Gear which was supplied by Olympus Americas Inc. on a no-charge basis. We are under no obligation what-so-ever to Olympus Americas Inc. in terms of our use of this loaner Olympus camera equipment. There is no expectation or agreement of any kind with Olympus Americas Inc. that we will create and share with readers any images, articles or videos, or on what that content may be.

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