Jun 9, 2025 | By: Jim Zuckerman
Unfortunately this picture is not tack sharp. My shutter speed was 1/640, which is usually fine for birds that are perched or simply walking. In this case, though, the ground hornbill in Kenya was grabbing insects on the ground and flipping them up into the air to then catch them in its mouth. It was intriguing to watch, and it made a great picture, but what I learned from this was that even a simple movement of the head can be so fast that a super fast shutter is needed for sharp pictures. I had enough light to use, say, 1/3200, but I just didn't analyze this situation correctly in the few seconds I had to take the shot. I used Topaz Sharpen AI in post-processing, but even that wasn't good enough. Still, I think it's a very cool capture. I took this with 700mm of focal length -- a 500mm plus the 1.4x teleconverter. The lens aperture was f/7.1 and the ISO 125.
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