Male Hooded Merganser In-Flight

Hooded merganser and another evening with crappy light, total cloud cover but I went out (again) anyway but this time I got lucky, was at the right location at the right time when a male hooded merganser decided to take flight! I decided to keep the ISO down as I wanted a clean file of this merganser, a bit of a gamble because shutter speeds this slow might make for soft out of focus images.

Male Hooded Merganser Flying Over Pond

Male Hooded Merganser In-Flight In Dull Light

I set the ISO to 400 and my shutter speed was slow at 1/500th, very slow for photographing birds in flight but tonight I got lucky This merganser wasn’t going to give me a second chance so I crossed my fingers and ended up with about 10 sharp images of this male hooded merganser in-flight.

Male Hooded Merganser On The Water

So it does pay to go out even if the light is crap, it did this time for me.

Male Hooded Merganser In-Flight Over Pond