720,000 attempts to perfection

[Valvebounce]

Hi 9VIII.
He's not frozen (dead), here's just sleeping! You can't see his feet, that is where the fishing line was tied to lower him carefully to the right place.

Cheers, Graham.

It would only take me five minutes to stick a frozen bird in a frozen pond. Sheesh lifetime achievements aren't what they used to be.

 

[sulla]

a frozen bird into a frozen pond.... GREAT!!! ;D

 

[Bennymiata]

a frozen bird into a frozen pond.... GREAT!!! ;D

If you hurry over, it might still be there! ;D

Seriously, an amazing photo and an incredible catch.

One little thing bothers me though. Even though its beak is sharp, I would have expected more splash at the point of entry.

 

[TeT]

I wonder how many cameras he has worn out since he started. 720K clicks on just this project alone.

 

[Maximilian]

...
Even though its beak is sharp, I would have expected more splash at the point of entry.

This is something to describe in detail by some fluid mechanics specialists.

As an amateur on this I'd say that in theses first few thousands and hundreds of a second the water surface tension is still strong enough so the beak "bends" the surface downwards. It needs to be bended even more until the head (and wings?) dives into the water and then the rebound causes the splash - depending on how well the aero- and aquadynamic shape of that kingfisher is. And as it is supposed to be very well I am not sure how many splash you'd see at all if it dives straight into the water without any disturbing movement or change of direction. This will happen after some thenth of a second, so I guess.
Compare it to human divers that are everything else than well shaped in terms of aquadynamic

 

[StudentOfLight]

The math is interesting.....

Let's say that the guy has absolutely perfect tracking skills and keeps the kingfisher perfectly framed as it dives....

So you want to get a picture where the first 1/2 cm of the bill is touching the water..... Assume the frame rate at 10FPS and the bird is diving at 50KPH..... that's 13.9 meters per second... or 1390 cm per second. That first half cm of the bill will be in the right position for 1/2780th of a second and that means that at 10 frames per second, the odds of capturing the shot are 1 in 278 tries....

As everyone who has tried photography of small birds knows, they are particularly hard to track.... they fly fast and they fly erratic.... the odds of tracking that bird in flight with an image large enough to show detail is quite low....

Despite the incredible number of shots taken to get the image, to me, this is an even more impressive display of tracking skills. Kudos!

+1,

My favorite type of small bird here in Cape Town is the sunbird. I've only been shooting birds casually for a couple of years now but I've still not managed to get one great in-flight shot. It's so hard to track these tiny birds while filling the frame.

 

[Sabaki]

The math is interesting.....

Let's say that the guy has absolutely perfect tracking skills and keeps the kingfisher perfectly framed as it dives....

So you want to get a picture where the first 1/2 cm of the bill is touching the water..... Assume the frame rate at 10FPS and the bird is diving at 50KPH..... that's 13.9 meters per second... or 1390 cm per second. That first half cm of the bill will be in the right position for 1/2780th of a second and that means that at 10 frames per second, the odds of capturing the shot are 1 in 278 tries....

As everyone who has tried photography of small birds knows, they are particularly hard to track.... they fly fast and they fly erratic.... the odds of tracking that bird in flight with an image large enough to show detail is quite low....

Despite the incredible number of shots taken to get the image, to me, this is an even more impressive display of tracking skills. Kudos!

+1,

My favorite type of small bird here in Cape Town is the sunbird. I've only been shooting birds casually for a couple of years now but I've still not managed to get one great in-flight shot. It's so hard to track these tiny birds while filling the frame.

You're from Cape Town? Me too!

Make a turn at Intaka Island. There's a breeding pair of malachite kingfishers diving right in front of the bird hide there