Bird photography - question

[JanN]

What is the proper way to shoot in-flight bird pictures? I've just started exploring birding and bird photography, and I'm completely lost about the settings.
I tried using a faster shutter, and a high f-value. That's it. Got some OK pictures, but most of them were blurred.

Here's my first attempt (.. err, not really the first.. third ) at shooting in flight bird.
These little fellas are so fast that it's really difficult to get the focus right, and I think a tripod may be of very little help.

Just wanted to know what techniques others are using? Please give me some pointers about capturing in flight bird pictures.

EXIF :
Camera make- Canon EOS 1000D
f5.6, 1/1000 at focal length 300mm
ISO 200.
lens- Sigma 70-300 f4.5-5.6

Thanks

[RichardTaylor]

How I do it.
Nowdays it is a Canon 40D + Canon 100-400 F4.5-F5.6 ID L lens.
Camera is almost always hand held, but will be ocassionaly on a mono pod depending on my Viewpoint.
I usually have an aperture of around F8 and a shutter speed 1/500 at least, however you can shoot lower depending on the velocity of the bird. ISO will depend on the lighting.

Centre focus point only and focus tracking active. High FPS is activated as well.
I start tracking the bird with the shutter button partially depressed to allow the camera/lens to lock on. A the bird fills the frame I fire off a burst. Usually have one or two keepers.

Examples.
(1)
[IMG][/IMG]

Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 350 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: -2/3 EV

and

(2) An older one when I was using a Tokina 80-400
[IMG][/IMG]

Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 400 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

[Bigmagic]

I love that first shot,you really got a lot of detail in the second one as well. Nice!

[kgb224]

Superb series of bird pictures captured by you.

[RichardTaylor]

Thanks very much.

[inkista]

You're headed in the right direction, but that shot looks like lower-light conditions, and with an entry-level lens like the Sigma 70-300, you may be asking a lot of it to lock focus quickly without more light to "see" by. Also, you have a further handicap with the 70-300 in that shooting wide open with it won't be using it as its sharpest (it'll look much nicer at f/8). So then you have to contend with noise from using a higher iso. It can be done, but your margin for error is smaller than for those of us with 400mm L lenses, where shooting wide open at f/5.6 isn't sacrificing much sharpness.

I do a lot of the same stuff Richard describes above, but I actually seem to have better luck with One Shot than with tracking, but I'm not used to my 50D's autofocus system, yet, and I may be relying on (bad) old habits I learned from my XT's primitive AF system.

I'd also say that more than half of getting good bird-in-flight shots has little to do with photographic skills and more to do with your birding skills. How close can you get without alarming them? Can you find them?

You do also have to train yourself to think fast---or to shoot without thinking at all, instinctively. You do have to have quick reflexes, anticipate the possibilites, and the ability to tell if you've got the bird framed, in focus, well lit, and well composed in a split second. The hardest part for me was controlling my excitement and learning when not to take the shot. About the 1000th time I deleted a "bird butt" shot or a fuzzy shot, I think, is when it started to sink in. Sometimes you just have to wait for the AF system to catch up. And if it doesn't do it in time, you look for another chance.

Avoid going for backlit birds. All the gorgeous bird shots you see typically are front or side lit. With birds in flight, this is the trickiest thing--paying attention to the direction of the light and letting them circle back around until they're well lit. Sometimes you'll have the opportunity. Sometimes you won't. But the readiness is all.

One more word on continuous burst shooting. You will want to use it, but you need to understand that it's fine-tuning of the moment. You still need to pick the right moment in the first place, and short controlled bursts are going to net you a better result than just doing a long spray'n'pray and hoping the camera grabbed it for you. The AF system sometimes may not have time to adjust properly between burst shots.

You may want to consider going to a local zoo and hanging out near a body of water and practicing on the local wildlife that comes for the free food. I do that when I'm rusty on my BiF skillz, because it's much like shooting fish in a barrel they're more or less desensitized to people, and I get a bird in flight opportunity about every three minutes.


Canon XT/350D. Adapted Leica Summicron-R 35/2. iso 400, f/8-ish, 1/3200s.


Canon XT/350D. EF 400mm f/5.6L. iso 400, f/5.6, 1/3200s.

Every bird in that tree is local wildlife. The collection birds are pinioned and can't get up there. At the Wild Animal Park, I've managed to get pictures of wild cattle egrets, black-crowned night heron, great egrets, greater blue herons, a variety of ducks, Canadian geese, roadrunners, a California thrasher, red-shouldered hawks, turkey vultures, a Costa's hummingbird, orioles, California mule deer, tarantula hawks, etc. etc. Don't assume that the collection beasties are all there is to see.

Not only will you have the fun of going to shoot the zoo animals, but it also isn't quite as frustrating for a beginner as heading out into the great wild hinterlands to wait for hours for the much shyer birds that may never get close enough to be photographed. Admittedly, the feeling of triumph is not as great, but neither will you get as discouraged, and the practice will help you speed up your reaction time for the truly wild ones. If you don't have a zoo handy, the other birds I'd recommend practicing on are rock pigeons and seagulls who always hope that humans will feed them. With them, you may not even need a telephoto.


Canon 350D. EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro. iso 100. f/5. 1/250s.

[JanN]

Thanks for the suggestions, Richard and inkista. Lovely bird pictures too

I guess with a very basic , entry level glass like the Sigma 70-300, expecting sharp pictures is like asking for the moon..
Liked the idea about clicking seagulls or pigeons. Yeah, I can do that.. I live near the seashore.. plenty of hungry gulls over here. I'll take that as my weekend assignment.

Thanks again..

[sk66]

On my Nikon I use 3D multi point and Continuous AF. I also use CLh burst mode and move the focus to the AF button and not on the shutter release. With these settings the AF system tracks the target and anticipates the focus for where the subject will be.

I think the common thing here is to use a Tracking/Continuous AF mode, and Burst Frames.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by JanN

I guess with a very basic , entry level glass like the Sigma 70-300, expecting sharp pictures is like asking for the moon.

Not really. It's more like only being able to shoot the moon when it's full. The 400 lens looks sharper only partially because it is, but also because it has more reach, so I crop less, and can retain resolution.

There are some tricks to squeezing a little more performance out of the 70-300. I learned every single one because the lens I had prior to my 400L was the 75-300 III (which is supposed to be even softer than the Sigma). Stopping the lens down makes the largest difference. Lenses tend not to be at their best wide-open. Going to f/8 or f/11 can sharpen things up considerably. Backing off from the 300mm end of the lens can help a tiny bit. And, of course, watching your shutter speed all the time is key( the 1/focal_length rule for eliminating camera shake blur). If you're shooting at 300mm, you want to stay at 1/300s or faster for the shutter speed. Or, use some form of stabilization/support, like a monopod, or resting the lens on a fence rail.

My old 75-300 III, creaky as it was, could get me sharp shots. I just had to know how to use it. My biggest problems with it, though, were that I couldn't get close enough to birds to get good resolution on shots with it, and the autofocus motor was very very slow, especially if I put a tc on the lens to try and get closer.

The second big big trick to getting good performance from a consumer zoom is post-processing skills. Knowing how to crop so that you still have some resolution left, and how to apply sharpening and saturation to an image can often help it along.

It's not the same as having the big glass, but it can help.


Canon XT. EF 75-300 III (non-USM), iso 1600, f/11, 1/1000s.