5 Tips For Taking Razor Sharp Images - Bird Photography Secrets Revealed - Jan Wegener Vlog

[Music] so [Music] guys welcome to another youtube video hope you're well today i want to look into something that we all want but not always get i'm talking about razor sharp crisp images that we take on our camera zooming into the computer and we see all the beautiful sharpness and the feather detail but why do we sometimes not get these shots what are the factors that contribute to getting a sharp shot or not getting a sharp shot so i want to show you my five tips today that make you get razor sharp images every time [Music] tip number one use the right equipment and fine tune it there's lots of different lenses out there for us bird photographers generally speaking zoom lenses offers a lot of flexibility but at the expense of ultimate and critical sharpness at the long end most zoom lenses will never be as sharp and have as many details as a nice big prime lens like this this is something to keep in mind but obviously we can't all afford a big prime lens so using a zoom lens is perfectly fine the same is true for using some of these if you're using an extender you will sacrifice a little bit of sharpness for extra reach just something again to keep in mind a bare prime lens will always be the lens that will give you the maximum amount of sharpness and image quality but even if you buy an expensive prime lens it doesn't mean it works perfectly right out of the box this is where one of these comes in for me this is a lens line there's lots of different tools out there that allow you to actually adjust where your camera focuses most slr cameras these days allow you to fine tune them out of focus in the settings usually through a micro adjustment that basically lets you shift either forward or backwards the critical point where the camera focuses so use this tool i set it up on a tripod set my camera away a fair distance from it line it up perfectly and then take a whole bunch of test shots moving my focus point forward and backwards until it perfectly sits where i wanted and that allows me to get the most out of my images i would highly recommend to you that you either do micro adjustment yourself or find someone who can do it for you if you're buying an expensive lens to definitely make sure that you're getting the most out of your images and critically sharp focus [Music] tip number two use a tripod i know some of you might be rolling with the eyes now because it's so much more convenient to handhold but especially if you're using a big prime lens you want to use a tripod it will help you to get more critically sharp photos and you will also increase your keeper right and your composition will be better when we're hand-holding we're just so concerned with hand-holding and getting the bird and keeping the bird in the viewfinder and not breathing and holding our breath and putting our elbow into our belly that image quality will suffer because we're just distracted and also composition will suffer so i would highly recommend using a tripod but even when you're using a chop make sure that you use a good one with a good tripod head and stabilize your lens even on a tripod by either putting your hand on top or like i do holding the bottom of your gimbal hat with your hand stabilizing it that way so for me definitely if you want sharp photos use a tripod [Music] tip number three and easily the most important one you have to use a fast enough shutter speed if you don't use a fast enough shutter speed you can basically ignore all other advice in this video because you won't be getting sharp photos why is the shutter speed so crucially important even if we have like in-body image stabilization or image stabilization our lens first of all birds move so if our shutter speed is too slow we will always not get critically sharp photos because actually the bird is moving if you're shooting at a 60th of a second the chances of getting a crisp shot are very very low simply because the birds are not static and then secondly our camera is shaking as well even if we stabilize it as much as we can there's still a bit of camera shake and movement so using slow shutter speeds puts you it's a great risk of not getting nice and sharp photos so my recommendation would be to use at least the 400th of a second that has given me the best results if you can use more but if you're like me you're shooting a lot in cloudy days or dark areas it's actually hard to get much more than the 400th of a second a lot of times you already have to bump up your eyes a fair bit to get there so there's always a trade-off between iso and shutter speed but as a rule of thumb i really don't like to shoot birds under 400 of a second if you're actually hand holding your lens the shutter speed becomes even more important because you really really need to have a fast enough shutter speed to make up for all the moving that you do with your hand even if you have image stabilization as an old rule of thumb people always used to say one over your focal length should be your shutter speed at the very least so if you're shooting at the 400 millimeter lens your shutter speed should be at least a 400th of a second that's not exactly true anymore with all the image stabilization we have now but as i said birds still move the same way they always used to move so shooting under four knits of a second for me will always put you at risk of not getting sharp shots and even a 400th of a second is not that fast so if you can shoot at an 800th of a second thousandth of a second or even more much better and this is just for still birds if we're talking flight shots you want to be at least at a 2 000 of a second or if you're on a tripod not really panning with the bird you probably need to be at a four thousand of a second or greater to get really nice sharp shots [Music] tip number four use the right aperture most lenses actually work better when they are stopped down at least one stop this is especially true for a lot of the zoom lenses many people use like 100 to 400 150 to 600 they're usually wide open at f 5.6 or 6.3 and they definitely increase in sharpness and image quality stop down to f8 so keep that in mind i know we're always tempted to shoot wide open to get smoother backgrounds faster shutter speed but generally speaking that doesn't give you the best image quality because you're losing depth of field and sharpness you can also check out my video on why you shouldn't just shoot wide open secondly if you're using one of these on a prime lens i wouldn't really recommend using extenders on a zoom lens because it will just decrease image quality dramatically so if you use these on a prime lens you also want to stop down at least one stop so if i put this 1.4 extender on my 600mm lens it gives me a 5.6 840 millimeter lens but to get the most image quality sharpness i actually stopped down to f8 to get more depth of field and more sharpness so keep in mind stopping down is definitely your friend will increase your sharpness your depth of field and will make you take better images tip number five watch the weather whenever people show me images and say yeah what happened i've been out and all my images are just not sharp what it's wrong is my camera broken most of the time it's heat haze people have been out like too early in the afternoon for instance when there's still all the heat coming off the ground and this is what ruined the images and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about heat haze it will ruin your images and you can't avoid it the only way to avoid heat haze ruining your images is to shoot when it's colder or different time of the day another thing that can ruin your images is fog because there's lots of little water droplets in the air in between your subject and the lens causing it to be a bit out of focus just hazy and not looking quite right so keep in mind that the weather can actually mess dramatically with your images and go out when it's perfect i like to go out early in the morning late in the afternoon or on a beautiful cloudy day like today where i don't have to worry about the sun interfering with my photos [Music] i hope in this video i could show you why you might struggle with getting really sharp bird images and how you can improve up on that let me know in the comments is there any point i miss that helps you getting really sharp shots give me thumbs up for this video subscribe to my channel i would really appreciate that and i will see you in the next video very soon

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 123,485

Keywords: bird photography, australia, vogelfotografie, jan wegener, birding, photography, birds, tutorial, equipment, exposure, manual mode, aperture, depth of field, wildlife photography, nature photography

Id: GljQh3hVgks

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020