10 SECRETS FOR TAKING SHARPER BIRD PHOTOS: Pro tips and mistakes to avoid!

crazy [Music] [Music] welcome to my second ever youtube video in my first video i showed you how to get this picture i was able to also share some great footage that i got that day i remember when i started bird photography catching a bird's breath was the farthest thing from my mind i was focused on getting birds and getting sharp photos so that's what my video is going to be about today i'm going to give you my top 10 tips on how to get sharper bird photos now i'm very fortunate these days i get to use this big 500 millimeter f4 lens and it is very sharp and it helps me get great sharp photos but i didn't always use that lens i also used my 100 to 400 lens and i still use it today i'll show you a combination of photos from this lens and my 500 right now i think you'll be hard-pressed to tell them apart now one way of getting sharper photos is indeed to buy a sharper lens but this isn't going to be about that i'm going to help you get sharper photos with the lenses you're using today i'm going to give you my top 10 tips as well as point out some mistakes you may be making hopefully by the end of this video you'll have the tools to be able to go out your very next outing and get sharper photos so let's dive in tip number one is having enough shutter speed the birds moving and as well your lens is moving around you need enough shutter speed to freeze this apparent motion a good rule of thumb is to use the fraction one over your focal length to determine what your shutter speed should be so if you have a 300 millimeter lens shoot 1 300th of a second 500 millimeter lens 1 500th of a second while this is a good rule of thumb to freeze the action remember that when you have a little bit more light or you have fidgety birds you can increase the shutter speed and if you're running low on light or it's starting to get a little bit dark you can lower it a little bit having the right shutter speed for flying birds gets a little bit more complicated there's actually an inverse relationship between the size of birds and the amount of shutter speed you need to freeze the action that's because larger birds move more slowly smaller birds are usually quicker larger birds like owls geese and eagles need less shutter speed than most birds because they move more slowly one thousandth of a second or one twelfth fiftieth of a second is usually enough to freeze the action if they're just flying by medium-sized birds like songbirds and ducks need more shutter speed around one two thousand or one twenty five hundredth of a second to freeze their motion when they're flying by small fast birds or fast flyers need even more shutter speed puffins sea ducks fidgety flycatchers and kinglets need maybe one thirty two hundredth of a second to freeze their action and finally hummingbirds may need as much as 1 4 000th or 1 5 000 of a second to freeze their action and make sure their photos are sure remember that birds that are closer to you have a quicker apparent motion through the field of view so they need a little bit more shutter speed birds that are farther away you might be able to do with a little bit less tip number two is around having the right settings for your camera for the focus mode most cameras have two focus modes a one-shot focus mode or a continuous focus mode the one-shot focus mode is often confirmed by a confirmation beep and it means that it is locked onto a certain focal plane if you keep the button pressed down it will keep shooting at that same focus point if your bird is moving forward and backward your auto focus is not moving back and forth with it on the other hand ai servo in canon or afc for autofocus continuous in nikon and sony focus will move back and forth with the bird keeping it in focus at all times you want to be using the ai servo or afc mode to make sure you're in continuous focus and the focus point is moving back and forth with the bird as it moves around keeping it in focus at all times tip number three is around shooting in good light there are two issues at play issue number one is in the absence of good directional light it's hard to have sharp photos dark dreary days leads to dark dreary photos unfortunately sharpness is often perceived by our eyes as the sharp lines between a well-lit and a shadowy area these areas of micro contrast are what we really perceive as sharpness and to get this you need a good amount of light and it's often assisted with having good directional light when it's really dark and dreary and cloudy and the lights being bounced all over the place you really don't get these little micro contrast areas on the birds and on the bird's feathers which we perceive as sharpness here are a few cloudy day photos while these are great photos their defining characteristic is not sharpness in the absence of good directional light we don't get those little shadows and that contrast that we perceive as sharpness now here's a few photos shot in good light and as you can tell they look very sharp you can see the fine edges of the feather detail which really comes across as sharpness to our eyes the second reason to shoot in good light is to keep your iso down lower iso photos look sharper and as your iso needs to go up it really takes away from the sharpness of the photos by creating less contrast and less fine detail and by the way by shooting in good light i don't mean the bright midday sun that's actually one of the worst times to be shooting photography for birds because it washes away all the color and blows out your bright highlights tip number three is around using good technique now there's two things you're trying to accomplish here the first thing you're trying to achieve is reduce the movement of the lens so that the bird stays in the same place in your field of view the bird being still in the frame will help produce a sharper image i like to keep the focus point focused on an unmoving part of the bird like the bird's head and try to keep it very still on that point while i take a photo the second reason you need good technique is to still the vibrations in the camera most people are still using dslrs which have a mirror box that the mirror needs to go up and down every time you take a photo and most other cameras still have a mechanical shutter that needs to open and close these vibrations impact image sharpness by shaking the camera a little bit every time you take a photo using good technique helps you still this movement helping you get sharper photos the bad news is that the longer the focal length of your lens the more that it magnifies this impact so it's even more important on longer lenses so here's the technique you need to grip the camera and the lens firmly with both hands remember you're trying to minimize the vibrations of the shutter as well as keep the lens from moving around and trying to keep the birds centered in the field of view you need to tuck in your elbows and tuck them in against your body to reduce the movement of the lens the next tip is very important and it's putting your eyebrow against the eye cup and putting a fair bit of pressure on while you're taking photos this reduces the vibration of the camera every time the shutter actuates and finally another technique tip is to not stab the shutter button you need to put your finger on it very lightly and then gently press down to take a photo another good technique is to put your finger next to the shutter button and just roll it over every time you want to take a photo now the lower the shutter speed and the longer the lens the more important these techniques are i used this technique to take this photo of a yellow crown knight heron i wanted to take a very tight portrait of his head at low iso for maximum quality so i lowered the shutter speed down to 1 50th of a second i put the lens on my knees as i was sitting on the beach i held onto the lens very very firmly i put my eyebrow very firmly against the eye cup and i squeezed the trigger very very gently and took a number of shots using the technique of putting my eyebrow against the back of the camera and holding onto the lens very very tightly i was able to reduce the shutter vibrations and get this very very sharp photo for flight shots our panning technique becomes very critical we use many of the same tips that we learned earlier we tuck in our elbows we put our eye against the back of the camera very firmly but what's important for panning is with the tucked in elbows we move our whole upper body to make the movement we don't have our elbows flying out trying to track this way we're really compromising our stability we need to tuck on our elbows put them in against our chest put our face back against the camera very firmly and swivel our whole upper body as we track the movement it's also important to keep the bird at the same place within the field of view and try to track that motion very accurately it's not good enough to put the bird anywhere in the field of view and try to track it as you move along a good place to practice this is shooting cars if you go by the side of the road where there are cars driving by try shooting panning shots as the cars are moving by then continually try dropping your shutter speed to see how low you can get it and still get the car in focus it helps to point the camera at a specific part of the car like a mirror as it goes by if you get your shutter speed down to 1 25th of a second and still get a sharp car you're getting good technique tip number five is to take lots of photos they're free and especially in low light taking lots of photos really improves your odds of having one that's really sharp you only need one they don't all need to be sharp yes you need to go through more photos but a tip for those of you using lightroom there's an auto advanced feature whereby you press x to delete a photo and p to pick a photo and it auto advances between those selections so you hit x x x x p to pick x x x x x x p to pick tip number five is finding the best aperture for your particular lens to increase sharpness lenses are sharper in the center than they are on the edges so stopping down the lens and making the aperture smaller allows you to use the part of the lens that's the sharpest every lens is different so you'll need to experiment to take advantage of this you'll need to increase the f number or decrease the aperture of your lens if you have a 5.6 lens it may be sharper at 6.3 7.1 or f 8. most lenses will benefit by being stopped down if you're unsure where to start adding one full stop to your aperture is a great place to start if you have an f 5.6 lens try shooting it at f 8. if you have a 6.3 lens try shooting it at f9 most lenses will benefit from this there's also a few ways to test this under control conditions at home if you want to take a dollar bill or the fine print on a cereal box tape it up on a wall take some test exposures on a tripod with a mirror locked up if possible to try to reduce all the variables put some good light on there and try taking a series of exposures using a two second timer to make sure the camera is very still and try shooting it at f 5.6 f 6.3 7.1 f 8 f 9 then look at the back of the camera or on the computer and see whether or not the images are getting sharper remember the center of your image may not change a lot because often the sharpest part of the lens is in the center look up in the corners to see whether or not as you stop the lens down it's actually getting sharper often you will find especially in the corners that by stopping the lens down the lens gets proactively sharper now this is a trade-off if you like a blurry background and you want to be using higher shutter speeds and lower isos stopping the lens down indefinitely leads to some other challenges so you need to try to find that sweet spot now the results will vary with different lenses and different camera combinations for this particular lens the 100 to 400 version 2 by canon with my 70 mark ii crop sensor camera i find that f 7.1 is the sweet spot i've achieved a bit of extra sharpness compared to shooting wide open but i haven't penalized myself by reducing the ability to blur out the background or add iso when i put my full frame camera on this lens i find that shooting at f 6.3 is sufficient so try out different experiments if you're not sure where to start try adding one full stop to the aperture go out and take some photos tip number seven is to stabilize your lens you can use a monopod or tripod to help support the lens and reduce the apparent movement of the bird in the camera it also creates some extra points for you to put pressure to stabilize the lens to reduce things like shutter vibration using the right technique for monopods and tripods is also important i see a lot of people putting their hand on the same plane as the post of their monopod to try to stabilize it on this plane is actually the place where you have the least amount of leverage to stop the movement of the lens you could put a very heavy weight on the same plane as the post of the monopod and you could still move the lens around with slight taps on the front move your hand up to the lens barrel at the end to create much more stability put your face down very firmly back at the camera and squeeze the trigger stabilization is not always about monopods and tripods i use my big 500 millimeter lens handheld most of the time but i use any advantage i can to help stabilize the lens so i'm always looking out for a tree a tree branch a rock my knees the ground any opportunity i have to stabilize the lens i'll fully take advantage of it tip number eight is a trick it's about creating the illusion of sharpness by having the bird stand out more in the photo you accomplish this by having a smoother cleaner background that really makes your subject pop many people ask about the sharpness of my photos not realizing that it's my style of photography that helps create the illusion of extra sharpness there's a few different techniques you can use to create a blurry or smoother background one of them is to get closer to your subject the closer you are to a subject the more out of focus the background will be another way to create a blurrier background is to use longer focal lengths if you have a zoom lens at 150 to 600 for example at 600 millimeters will create a softer background than shooting it at 400 for example another way to have a blurrier background is to have the background farther away creating more distance between your subject and the background renders the background more out of focus blurrier and cleaner some techniques to accomplish this is to look for birds in areas where the background is clean rather than looking for birds in deep thickets where the background is going to be right behind it there's also ways to look at the background after you spot a bird to see whether or not there are holes in the background trees that you can position the bird in front of that hole or that area where there's less activity create a creamier smoother background waiting to take the shot until the background is clean is another option for this photo i had some trees directly behind the bird but i waited for the bird to walk into a clearing area where the background was much more distant and that's when i took the photo another technique is to get down low on the ground this is great for sandpipers ducks and other birds that are on the ground by doing so you render the background and the foreground much more out of focus making the subject stand out in the photo much more in this photo i laid right down on the beach rendering the background almost to infinity nice and smooth and really highlighting the bird in the photo tip number nine is around post processing it's always best to get the sharpness right in camera before you try to improve it in processing you can't take a blurry image and make it sharp but you can selectively apply sharpness and clarity to your subject and that's really the trick don't apply it globally to the whole photo try to apply it selectively to your subject only another important thing in processing is to avoid cropping too deeply when you crop too deeply you show off the lack of sharpness of your bird as well as you increase digital noise by magnifying it in these cases keep the frame wide use compositional techniques include the environment in the bird photo keep the birds small in the frame this will improve the appearance of sharpness of your subject tip number 10 is around heat diffraction and heat shimmer have you ever come back from a photo shoot and thought you had some sharp photos but when you look at them they're all soft and mushy the same mechanism that produces a mirage or makes the air shimmer above warm pavement can really impact the sharpness of your photos shooting over a field or a body of water that's been warmed by the sun all day may produce a shimmering effect that will really impact the sharpness of your photos when i'm driving around in the winter time in my vehicle looking for targets i turn the heater off otherwise you will have an envelope of warm air around your vehicle which will really impact the sharpness of your photos if shot through the window of your car while you can mitigate the impact of having a warm vehicle shooting into a cold environment when you're having heat shimmer from a field or body of water that's been heated by the sun all day there's not a lot you can do you can shoot earlier in the day or you can find another location in cold climates if you're driving around looking for targets and you see something on the passenger side stopping your vehicle getting out placing your elbows on top of the hood to take the photo is about the worst thing you can do i know i've done it that's actually where the most amount of heat is coming out of your vehicle okay those are my top 10 tips for sharper photos i hope you can put these to use the very next time you go out apply these sharpness techniques see if you can avoid some of the mistakes you'd be making which ones of these did you use did i miss any let me and the viewers know in the comments below also i'm working on more behind the scenes videos to make sure you don't miss those make sure to like and subscribe to see more content as i post it thanks very much [Music] you

Channel: Simon d'Entremont

Views: 209,280

Keywords: birds, bird photography, sharp photos, sharp pictures, wildlife photography, Photography, Bird, Nature photography, Nature, bird photography tips and tricks, bird photography tips, bird photography techniques, photography tips, bird photography gear, bird photography for beginners, learn bird photography, bird photography equipment, bird photography tutorial, bird photography camera settings, bird photography settings, sharp bird photos, birding gear, small bird photography tips

Id: QXy7GbZtdPI

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022