Author: DMcA

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal in the world, and is able to dive at speeds of up to 240mph. It’s a quite a small bird, so a long 600mm focal length is needed. Trying to follow something travelling that small and fast through a 600mm telephoto, and capturing key moments is impossible for me except via blind chance (spray and pray).

The test results from my first trip to the HCT with the new OM1 camera were very encouraging (see previous album). They made me wonder if I could use the camera with a clever little gadget called a “dot sight” to get previously difficult or impossible shots of Falcons and Kites. The dot sight makes finding the Falcon with a telephoto lens much easier, but the focusing system then needs to be super responsive and super accurate.




The Sony A9 or A1 cameras are not fast enough and the big Sony lenses are not manoeuvrable enough to achieve this. But the OM1 is both small and super quick. And it worked. I was able to get images of the Falcon capturing its lure on the wing – something I’ve not managed in over a dozen attempts before. In addition I got some amazing shots of Kites chasing vertically after catapulted pieces of chicken – more shots than in all previous visits put together. All in all an amazing result for the OM1 – the best camera for this kind of bird photography in the world!




Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

I got my spiffy new OM Digital Solutions OM1 camera in early March 2022, and have been wanting to try it out on some intensive bird in flight action. Once the half-term and having fun with Grandkids period was over, I headed down to the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Andover to run it through it’s paces. The weather was great, and I took over 6000 test shots. I have taken so many photos at the HCT that I only bother putting up interesting ones – so here are 17 of those 6k shots. By the way the OM1 performed very well, and the results are written up in my posts section. All these shots were processed in one morning in On1 Photo Raw 2022.


Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

A series of long exposure shots taken in early spring near Tintagel, Cornwall. This is a spectacularly lovely area that we used to come on holiday to as a family 60 years ago. I took all the shots with my Nikon Z7, a camera with great image quality, and almost no modern features compared to my Olympus OM1. Despite that I was quite pleased with the results, which were processed completely in On1 PhotoRaw.




Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon