This article shares a collection of 10 consecutive images of a swallow taking flight. All were captured handheld with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X using Pro Capture H.
NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.
Finding a subject bird in a good position in terms of an unobstructed background is always helpful when photographing birds taking flight.
Swallows are extremely fast and erratic flyers so capturing them taking flight takes good shutter release timing.
Using the Olympus Pro Capture H mode is an ideal technology to use for this type of photography.
To capture these images of a swallow taking flight I moved in as close as possible to the subject bird.
Based on the swallow’s head position I was anticipating that it would fly to its right.
I positioned the bird in the lower section of the frame to allow for wing movements. The photograph above is one of my favourites from the image run.
All of the photographs in this article were captured using a frame rate of 60 fps. This allowed me to capture a number of interesting wing positions.
These photographs of a swallow taking flight were captured at high noon under very harsh sunlight. This required some fairly aggressive adjustments in post.
I used my standard small bird settings for Pro Capture H mode… 15 Pre-shutter frames and my Frame Limiter set to 15.
All of the ten photographs in this article were captured in a total of 1/6th of a second. Images are shown as 100% captures without any cropping done to the photographs.
Technical Note:
Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Image were produced from RAW files using my standard process.
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