Winging it ....

[Clicker]

Trying to get  decent photographs of birds in flight is  flipping difficult ...and is not helped when  you inadvertently  knock the manual  button  after  setting up the camera for a particular shooting opportunity.. I don't usually  chimp after shooting but I wish I had  when I was  at the International Centre for Birds of Prey a few weeks ago ...... Still on a sharp learning curve for this genre but I am hoping  to get better   I took hundreds of pics but had to bin loads  ...  here are a few  heavy crops ... just to give you an taste  of what it was like ...

 

 

[Clicker]

And one that was stationary .... 

[Korky]

A fine set of images there, Mrs C.

I realise that shot 2 isn't top of the pops as a wildlife image, but as a creative crop / composition it's an absolute belter - I love how you've placed the bird in the frame.

Excellent!

Korky

[Clicker]

Thanks Korks .... ..I'm a novice at getting the settings right  for very fast  in flight  images ... need a lot of practise but it's a challenge ...  Yeah I had  to compensate   for the  cr*p quality  of the image and use some negative space on  a few pics  to  deflect attention  from the lack  of focus and detail  and make the composition the  talking point so to speak .......So...   Shhhh.....mum's the word !

[johntwo]

2 and 4 for me Polly.  Nice that you have some texture in the sky as well.  Manual is one way to go if you set up one of the function buttons to control autofocus separating it from auto exposure which is still controlled by the shutter button.  That's Fuji's version of back button focusing and coupled with auto ISO is what is recommended by some for BIF.  The trouble is that in the excitement of the chase, I always forget to set the camera up.

[Clicker]

32 minutes ago, johntwo said:

2 and 4 for me Polly.  Nice that you have some texture in the sky as well.  Manual is one way to go if you set up one of the function buttons to control autofocus separating it from auto exposure which is still controlled by the shutter button.  That's Fuji's version of back button focusing and coupled with auto ISO is what is recommended by some for BIF.  The trouble is that in the excitement of the chase, I always forget to set the camera up.

I got a bit like that John ... Back button focusing  seems to be the way to go ...

[johntwo]

It allows you to pre set the exposure/compensation and just concentrate on focus and the frame but the bit I always forget is to switch to shutter priority and Auto ISO.  Hence a lot of blurred (as opposed to OOF) shots.