A few weeks a go whilst in the hide at La Claire Mare nature reserve, sitting patiently waiting for something exciting to happen, I happened to notice that the resident rabbits were having to leap over a small area of water to get to and from the grassy island in the centre of the pond. And so I thought, what better way to test Canon's new 1D Mark IV's auto-focusing capabilities then to see if it could cope with a few flying bunnies, much to the amusement of the
Guernsey Bird Nerd who happened to be sitting next to me at the time. I'm guessing that me singing under my breath the brilliant 'Rabbit' by Chas 'n' Dave didn't help my cause much!
Anyway, here's one of my first attempts, although initially looking ok on the back of the camera it was unfortunately out of focus, but you get the idea of what I was trying to get.
Before this time I hadn't really had chance to test out one of the new features of the latest batch of Canon bodies, namely auto iso. I quickly realised that for situations such as this where the light was diminishing quickly and the rabbits were moving from areas of shade into sunlight, by putting the camera into TV mode and setting the shutter speed to somewhere in the region of 1/3200 or 1/4000 (those rabbits don't hang around!) and letting the auto iso do its thing I could concentrate on capturing the action without having to worry too much about the light. I've since become a very big fan of the auto iso feature.
Another attempt but yet again just out of focus. Because I'm working here with such a long focal length, all of these were taken using the Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, at its widest aperture and at a relatively short distance, the depth of field is very shallow. And so trying to gauge where the rabbit will leap and trying to maintain focus on or around the rabbits head is far from easy.
At last, a sharp one! Would have been nice to get the rabbit at the height of its jump but it's things like this that keeps me going back for another go.
A couple more of a rabbit taking more of a run across rather than a leap!
This one is probably the best of my attempts, nice and sharp and shows the rabbit off nicely in mid-leap.
Moving away from the leaping rabbits of Claire Mare to some rather more relaxed rabbits. Here's a couple of shots taken whilst I was lay prone in the middle of a field waiting for a certain Ring Ouzel to come within range.
And so to end this rabbit themed evening how about a couple of photos of the rather splendid Lièvre d'Europe, or if you prefer, the European Hare. These were taken on my recent visit to France (more of that in my next post). I'd never seen a hare before and so catching my first sight of one bounding across a field one evening as the sun was setting was a wonderful experience.
This one we came across whilst out driving one afternoon...
...and this one, well this one will always remind me that nature photography shouldn't always be taken too seriously. I guess you had to be there to see the funny side but try and picture if you will, 3 bird photographers out in the car looking for shrikes, hoopoe's and the like, definitely not prepared for hare photography!
So when this young hare showed up in front of us it quickly resulted in the disappearance of any photographic professionalism that might have been in that car a few seconds earlier - any passers by would have looked on bemused as the car was reversed and then moved forward at various angles whilst various large lenses were thrust through every available window in an effort to capture the hare which was not moving at the lightening pace you'd expect but more of a casual amble!
After the laughter had subsided and the hare had disappeared into a nearby hedge we looked at the results mainly to find shots of the car interior or the surrounding hedgerow.
Having said all that it turns out that I must have been doing something right as I did manage to get one decent shot. I actually think it's one of my favourite shots from the trip. Good times!
