Blue Heron - Help!!

[FJT]

This heron visits the ponds near my house every day in the summer at about the same time in the early afternoon. Usually I can only get photos of him in silhouette against the sun, but I did manage one fairly sharp photo of him in a slightly different location last autumn. This is the best I could do hand held. As he's bound to be back this year and I would love to get a better photo of him, what tips can you give me to improve on this? Different settings maybe? I now have an extender for my zoom lens to get a bit closer and will be taking the tripod out with me more as I can't hand hold the 70-200mm with the extender and stay steady!

This was taken on my old Rebel XTi
189mm
iso 100
f/8.0
1/30 (too slow?)
Manual

[Kathy G]

He's a great bird, maybe just crop the picture a bit so it's easier to find him.

[bearcat]

I like the composition of this picture and you are right about a tri-pod. If the pic was a little bit sharper
you could do a closer crop and the bird would stick out a bit more.I'm not a real fan of a tele-converter,I think if you work on getting your pictures "tack-sharp" you can blowup your photos and get similer results.

[sk66]

For my bird shots I am generally using f/8 and 1/1000- 1/2000....ISO as needed. I have been taking quite a few shots handheld at 800mm.

BTW, I tend to agree on the multipliers....Unless it's a "really long" shot, I avoid it. The light penalty is just too great.

[FJT]

Thanks everyone. All very helpful. I'm going to practise on some other birds while I wait for my heron to reappear. I'll be taking my tripod, upping the shutter speed and seeing what happens!!