Color in motion

Famous among photographers who go on safari in Africa is the lilac-breasted roller. It is one of the most beautiful birds in Africa with 8 different colors: lilac, turquoise, green, dark blue, red-brown, black, white, and yellow. For 10 years I tried to capture this bird in flight with my Mamiya RZ 67 medium format film camera, and I never got anything decent. The fastest shutter on that camera was 1/400th of a second; it was simply impossible to freeze wing movement. Plus, the camera’s manual focus compounded the problem. As soon as I went digital in 2005, I was finally able to get some good shots even though it was still quite challenging. These birds are really fast! For this picture, the settings were 1/2000, f/16, and 800 ISO. My shutter should have been 1/3200 because you can see a little blur in the wings. I had been shooting something else and didn’t have time to change settings before the roller flew.