Canada Birding Photography Locations & Reports

Tracking Birds In Flight

You cant take a photo without a subject, your first problem will be trying to track flying birds and at first even finding them in your viewfinder will be tough going. This may sound easy, but depending on the species of bird, how fast the bird is moving and how much time you need to find it, focus on it and shoot will make all the difference in the world. Its easy to lose sight of a moving object looking through your cameras viewfinder and once lost its very hard to regain in time for a shot. When you do loose sight, and you will, open your other eye. This way you should be able to put the camera back on target quickly, or at least get a good general idea on the birds flight path.
Practice, practice, practice! Take your camera to the beach, spend a few hours shooting slow flying seagulls, pigeons or anything else in the air for that matter, well almost anything. For now, stay away from swallows, songbirds, it will only make you crazy! You want to be able to grab that bird in the viewfinder quickly and the only way to do that is by practicing..a lot!
At first you might tend to stop tracking as you click the shutter release button, always try to keep a fluid/smooth motion.

Shutter Speed & Aperture

Ok, you have master the tracking birds in flight part, but when you arrived at home and started viewing the photos, you noticed all your photographs are blurry and out of focus. Your bird tracking skills are top notch, so what the heck is this!

Well, it can be a few things,

• Your shot was on target, in focus, but the shutter speed was too slow, so now you have motion blur.
• Out of focus, you may have slipped off target and taken a photo of the background, the birds extremities, wing tips etc.

How fast of a shutter speed is needed for photographing birds in flight?

Well, the faster the better! You want to stop action (or in most cases) and depending on the bird you are trying to photograph, you want to try to keep your shutter speed up around 1/1500 of a second or more, but this is not the rule. It all depends on the lighting conditions. A dull overcast day is not the best time to try photographing birds in flight. It also depends on flight path. A bird flying directly at you or away at high speed compared to one flying in front and across makes a huge difference.
If you can not obtain fast shutter speeds due to light conditions, start upping the ISO setting. Getting a decent photo with a slow shutter speed is possible, but not a good starting point.

Canada Goose coming in for a landing.
Aperture f/5.6
Shutter speed 1/200 of a second
ISO 400
Focal length 420mm

• Ducks in flight & motion blur. Not the best example but you can see the background motion blur in this photo.
• Aperture f/5.6
• Shutter speed 1/250 of a second
• ISO 400
• Focal lenght 420mm

Example of high shutter speed & birds in flight

• Sharp Shinned hawk & a high speed fly-by.
• Aperture f/5.6
• Shutter speed 1/2000 of a second
• ISO 500
• Focal length 420mm

To fix the problems above, you first need to get out of the cameras auto mode!

1. Aperture priority mode.
   To start with, try aperture priority mode and set your cameras lens aperture to its lowest f/ number ( widest aperture). If you are shooting with lets say a Nikon 300mm f/4, your lowest f stop (lets the most light in) is f/4. The smaller the f stop (aperture), the more light can be gathered, thus a faster shutter speed can be obtained. Also know as “wide open”.
2. Manual exposure mode.
   Adjust your camera settings manually.
   (a) Set your aperture to it lowest F stop number.
   (b) Point at a neutral grey object that is lit by the same lighting your subject will be in and manually set your shutter speed. If need be, crank up the ISO to gain higher shutter speeds.
   Take a few shots, check your histogram and adjust your shutter speed accordingly. If the image is blown out (too bright), adjust your shutter speed faster. If the test photo is too dark, lower your shutter speed. Once you have done this a few times it only takes a few seconds to set your camera up in manual mode. This is the best way to obtain accurate exposures, but remember, when the light changes your setting will have to change too.

The best way to see what went wrong, or right is by looking at the exif data from the image. A great program for this is Opanda IExif, its a free program that will show you all the details (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) of a digital photo. 

Camera Lenses

Not all lenses are created equally, you might have noticed this by the price tags! Obviously, a faster focusing lens is preferable for photographing birds In flight, but at what cost? Well, that’s for you to decide.

Rob