The bird show people asked for someone with a good camera to volunteer, so of course I did. They positioned me in the exact right place to get the owl, but of course it was up to me to actually capture the shot. The presenter helpfully put up her hand and told me to focus on it, and then they unleashed the owl.

I got several pictures of the owl as it sped towards me, and of course this is the biggest and best. If you ever get this opportunity yourself, the thing to do is put your camera into continuous shooting mode, hold down the shutter and make sure your camera's aimed properly.

By an interesting coincidence, Rick Lee gave a D300 tip telling his fellow owners to use this technique with people shots. He is right, and the photo I show here demonstrates that even with slower cameras like my ancient Canon EOS D30 (over five years old!) you can still do the same thing. Not as well as the D300 - and the D300 has much better autofocus so I would have had much sharper pictures with one - but sometimes you can get lucky even with an ancient camera like my own.

I am nonetheless planning to get a D300 as soon as I can afford one, but I thought it would be good to point out that this technique is useful even with ancient digital SLRs like my first generation D30.

D

Filed under: D30, Canon, bird, flight, national aviary, and pittsburgh

Here are four digital SLR cameras you might be interested in, taken through their paces by technology site Gizmodo.

I really liked the simplicity of these reviews - they are not incredibly long bogged-down monsters but tell you enough to get a sense for differences between the cameras.

Filed under: nikon, canon, olympus, and sony