# 720,000 attempts to perfection



## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 26, 2015)

The North American photographer Alan Macfadyen sought the perfect picture of a bird touching the water, and after 720,000 attempts he came to this.






Read Full Article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3330286/Photographer-takes-perfect-picture-diving-kingfisher-six-years-4-200-hours-720-000-shots.html


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## Northstar (Nov 26, 2015)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> The North American photographer Alan Macfadyen sought the perfect picture of a bird touching the water, and after 720,000 attempts he came to this.
> 
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> 
> ...



It sure is a great shot...I know I wouldn't have had enough patience to pull it off.


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## Click (Nov 26, 2015)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> The North American photographer Alan Macfadyen sought the perfect picture of a bird touching the water, and after 720,000 attempts he came to this.



Awesome. Great shot.


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## coreyhkh (Nov 26, 2015)

Its really blurry, I would of deleted it lol


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## sunnyVan (Nov 26, 2015)

Maybe if he had used 7dmk2, he would've gotten his shot much sooner. Too bad he used nikon.


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## sanj (Nov 26, 2015)

Even after so many attempts he got the shutter speed wrong.

"leaves the building"


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## DavidR (Nov 26, 2015)

He`s not North American; he`s from Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland as the newspaper article states. They breed them tough down there.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 26, 2015)

sunnyVan said:


> Maybe if he had used 7dmk2, he would've gotten his shot much sooner. Too bad he used nikon.


When he began his search for the "perfect image" did not exist 7D Mark II. But if he had used 1D Mark IV could have achieved the aim of "only" 50,000 attempts. :

Nikon sucks, really.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 26, 2015)

sanj said:


> Even after so many attempts he got the shutter speed wrong.


Yes, the shutter speed is not fast enough to say that reached perfection. Does he tried so obsessed extract the maximum dynamic range at ISO100? ???

If trying to 1DX could have something even closer to the "perfection". :-X


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## Maximilian (Nov 27, 2015)

Thanks for sharing, ajfotofilmagem!

Could someone of you please tell me if you have access to the shooting data and if I didn't read or search properly for EXIF or else or if you're just guessing from the look of the picture.

And although my first thought about it was "wrong shutter speed", too, I must say the biggest tragedy of it is that Mr. Joseph Curtis for Mailonline wasn't able to add an at least decent portrait of Mr. McFadyen to his article :
(Maybe it was the guy from "Mercury Press", but who cares...)


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## AlanF (Nov 27, 2015)

A mistake by the journalist is to describe the two kingfishers facing each other as "female": the one on the left is male.


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## Steve Balcombe (Nov 27, 2015)

It seems churlish to criticise, especially when I don't have any diving kingfisher shots to compare with his, but
4,200 hours is two years of working weeks. I'd be pretty disappointed if I couldn't get a sharp shot in that time!


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## Sabaki (Nov 27, 2015)

I'd hazard a guess and say it's probably more a tracking issue here than a shutter speed one.

We have malachite kingfishers in my area and even with shutter speeds in excess of 1/5000th, you do not get maximum sharpness if your tracking isn't spot on.

These birds are explosive and travel short distances extremely quickly. Of course, the close in crop of this will magnify the lack of perfection even more


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## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 27, 2015)

Maximilian said:


> Thanks for sharing, ajfotofilmagem!
> 
> Could someone of you please tell me if you have access to the shooting data and if I didn't read or search properly for EXIF or else or if you're just guessing from the look of the picture.
> 
> ...


Yes, the picture showing Mr. Macfadyen posing with his Nikon is terribly blurry. It makes me think that the newspaper dismissed all photographers, and the journalists made this portrait using a cell phone ...


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## Valvebounce (Nov 27, 2015)

Hi. 
I read the article twice, I couldn't find where it said North American, what I did find was this, 
Mr McFadyen, from the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland, if I'm mistaken please feel free to bring it to my attention! ;D 
However, that doesn't change the fact that it is a stunning shot, and the man must have the patience of a saint and an understanding family. 
Thanks for sharing this. 

Cheers, Graham. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3330286/Photographer-takes-perfect-picture-diving-kingfisher-six-years-4-200-hours-720-000-shots.html#ixzz3shVVdcHr 
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ajfotofilmagem said:


> The North American photographer Alan Macfadyen sought the perfect picture of a bird touching the water, and after 720,000 attempts he came to this.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## AlanF (Nov 27, 2015)

What will he do next? Anything else will be an anti-climax.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 27, 2015)

Valvebounce said:


> Hi.
> I read the article twice, I couldn't find where it said North American, what I did find was this,
> Mr McFadyen, from the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland, if I'm mistaken please feel free to bring it to my attention! ;D
> However, that doesn't change the fact that it is a stunning shot, and the man must have the patience of a saint and an understanding family.
> ...


I read the story, first in Portuguese, where it was stated that the photographer Alan Macfadyen was North American.
Then sought an English version for posting the link.


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## Don Haines (Nov 27, 2015)

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!


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## kaswindell (Nov 27, 2015)

Steve Balcombe said:


> It seems churlish to criticise, especially when I don't have any diving kingfisher shots to compare with his, but
> 4,200 hours is two years of working weeks. I'd be pretty disappointed if I couldn't get a sharp shot in that time!


I have to agree. While it may not reach the same level of "perfection " that a stacked macro shot of a pebble might achieve, it is waaaaay better than anything I have managed with much slower birds. We'll done.


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## 9VIII (Dec 13, 2015)

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.


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## Valvebounce (Dec 14, 2015)

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. 



9VIII said:


> 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.


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## sulla (Dec 14, 2015)

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


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## Bennymiata (Dec 14, 2015)

sulla said:


> 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.


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## TeT (Dec 14, 2015)

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


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## Maximilian (Dec 14, 2015)

Bennymiata said:


> ...
> 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


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## StudentOfLight (Dec 14, 2015)

Don Haines said:


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


+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.


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## Sabaki (Dec 14, 2015)

StudentOfLight said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > The math is interesting.....
> ...



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


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