
Before starting and at the end of photographing Kodiak Brown Bears for two weeks, I squeezed in a little aviation photography. We’ve worked with Willy and his delightful wife for a while now, getting our tonnage flown into and out of Bear Camp. He’s the best! I wanted to add to my library images of his aircraft so this year you could say, I went for broke. I wanted to blur the background much more than I did last shoot and make the Beaver look a little faster on the water. That meant going with a slow shutter speed, a low percentage shot. I set the Z 9 to Shutter Priority and the shutter speed to 1/30. I was using the Z70-200f2.8 with the Z1.4x so the camera could go to f32 if it needed (it went to f/22) to to work with that shutter speed. With the Z 9 set to Auto Area AF, all that was needed was a smooth pan and in theory, I’d have the shot. As it turned out, I had a hole bunch of images to pick from, the Z 9 and the panning all worked as they should. And Willy, he not only has a whole bunch of photos to select from, he gave us a ride back to civilization!