On a recent outing with eagles the day had been pretty good…but as evening approached the light dropped off, and a few of the other photographers started to pack it up and head for home. The equipment I use (Olympus) has a very small sensor, and it’s not noted for working all that well in low light conditions. Nevertheless, I decided to stick around and tinker a bit with things. Since eagles were still flying and making some passes, I decided to slow my shutter speed way down. From about 1/1600 (which is normal for big bird action) to around 1/100th or so. This reduction allowed me to keep my ISO down and keep shooting awhile longer. The result of this really slow shutter speed though is you can create blurred action shots. Most of these you’ll toss away because everything will be blurry, but every now and then, when you get the panning speed right and get a little lucky too, you can get an image that shows a lot of motion, but the head or eye remains pretty clear. Here you can see a lot of detail in the face…the translucent, nictitating membrane is protecting the eye while the bird flies through some branches, and you can see it has a fish in it’s talons…and a nice meal to end the day! I’m looking to try more of this as the season goes along…it’s fun to do, and you can stay out just a bit longer before nightfall.