Master BIRDS in FLIGHT Photography! SETTINGS for SUCCESS! Image Stabilisation ON or OFF?

[Music] hi guys welcome back to the bird photography show with glenn bartley hello and me jan wegener and today we want to talk all about birds and flight photography and share our tips and secrets with you how you can take amazing birds and flight images as well and i've seen that you glenn have taken a lot of amazing tiny swallows in flight images so i thought you could talk us through the process that you've gone through to capture those amazing shots this spring i couldn't go anywhere i had to stay locally but then i thought what could i do differently close to home and immediately what came to mind were these beautiful violet green swallows and they live right here in victoria where i live so i thought i should really try to photograph these swallows so i started trying to find a good spot because one of the key things with bird photography is having a great spot in order to achieve the photos that you're after i needed it to be kind of where there was a bit of turbulent weather the wind made it so that the food was easier for them to get down low close to the water and not only that the wind really helped me out because as we all know swallows are super fast erratic flying birds but in the wind it slowed them down just a little bit that made it more possible i was shooting them with my 600 millimeter lens and oftentimes even with the 1.4 converter on and i was ultimately very happy with some of the shots i got what i really wanted with the violet green was something that showed its characteristic you know what it's named after that showed the green and the purple tell us down in the comments what you think did i nail it or what you definitely did really well they're getting those images can you maybe share before and after image with us as well so we can see how much you cropped and kind of how you edited that file as well yeah for sure it wasn't a huge amount of really fancy editing going on in this one but if you guys want to learn to take your images to the next level we've got some links for you down in the description with those swallows and all birds and flights you usually have to have a high shutter speed to freeze that action were you like particularly fast with the shutter speed in this case for sure well definitely you nailed it there i mean when it comes to birds in flight you're always thinking first and foremost about speed so i knew i really had to keep my shutter speed super fast i believe that photo was at 5 000 of a second but i was really trying to keep it like 3 200 4 000 5000 up in that range because they're just so fast i would say probably for most birds in flight i try to keep it at at least a two thousandth of a second what about you yeah for me a two thousand of a second would definitely be kind of a minimum as well and i think there's one distinction we need to make as well between whether you're panning with the bird or whether you're like stationary on a tripod for instance and then you're photographing a bird that's kind of just flying through your screen because it's taking off a nest or taking off from a perch because if you're panning with the bird you will be able to have slower shutter speeds and still get like a sharp image but from my experience at least if i'm like at the water spot and there's a perch and i know the bird is going to jump down to the water just quickly flying through my screen and i want to freeze that action i usually have to have at least the four thousands of a second or like a sixty four hundredth of a second that's a good point about the stationary tripod now of course that brings us into a nice segue into well what do we all need if we wanna have a fast shutter speed usually we of course also have to consider our aperture and our iso so the iso is obviously going to depend on your conditions in order to achieve because shutter speed is the most important thing so you're going to have to put your iso wherever it needs to go in order to achieve those shutter speeds typically birds and flight a bit further away from us anyway so we can actually shoot wide open and it's not as much of a concern or depth of field it's not as much of a concern simply because the bird is a lot further away and you just have a lot more depth of field on the bird but typically with most lenses especially if i'm shooting with a 1.4 extender i would probably try to stop down a little bit because it gives you a little bit of extra sharpness but most important is definitely the shutter speed you're going to have these fleeting moments where the bird is where you want it and of course you want to get as many frames as possible when they happen to come through your sweet spot so highest possible frame rate is always a benefit and that's where these mirrorless cameras are really showing one of their true strengths and the camera that i was shooting with could shoot at 20 frames a second and of course some of them now can even shoot at 30 frames a second so if you have just like you know literally like one moment and you happen to get all those extra frames the more frames you have is definitely better for birds of flight photography and there's obviously something that a few of these cameras have in the electronic shutter mode and that's the rolling shutter with heavily distorts or wing or if you have trees in the background they might all be a little bit on an angle and i've found that for birds in flight if there's because there's typically no kind of straight elements in our frame and if we're panning with the bird then that rolling shutter is really not a problem but where i've seen it happen it's the only time it actually happened to me is when i was shooting these birds that were flying through my screen from a perch and i was just stationary on a tripod just every time the bird would take off i was just clicking away that's where i sometimes could see like a wing that was just really bent upwards and like longer than normal knowing your frame rate and your buffer size is actually important as well especially when you're shooting with like a slower frame camera like we've done in the past with the 5d or 7d and if you shoot too early what often will happen you fill up your buffer before the bird is actually in the spot where you want to take your photo so i think if you have a camera that might only do five six seven frames per second and has a buffer of like 20 frames you actually have to know that those 20 frames in your buffer will fill up in no time so you actually have to be patient and control yourself so you wait until the bird is almost in the spot that you pre-selected where you want to take your photos and then you start firing away because otherwise you might end up with that horrible click click click sound you just see the bird go out of your frame and you don't get any shots i think that's important to keep in mind especially on the slower cameras that don't have such a big buffer there's this rumor that when you're doing flight photography i always get people asking do you turn your is off and to be honest i usually don't turn it off but in these swallows because what i'd heard is if it's a really fast shutter speed that sometimes the is can actually get in the way of that really fast shutter speed this is like a rumor that i had heard but i have not fact checked at all so in these ones i was actually doing something i normally don't do and i turned is off so what about you yan do you leave it on or off when it comes to flight shooting this is a very interesting point glenn because i never turn off my es and i've had a few comments recently where people ask me exactly about this well let's call it issue and so i did a little bit of reading more on that because i started to think am i doing something wrong here am i giving the wrong advice just staying on the is and let me first share why i never turn up the s first of all i feel like especially now with the r5 as well and the ibis it really stabilizes my viewfinder a lot so i actually find it easier to track the birds if i turn off the is in the ibiz my whole lens setup becomes a lot more shaky and i find it a lot more difficult to kind of track the birds whereas with the ibis and the is on my viewfinder it's really nice and smooth and it helps me tracking the birds and the other issue i had if i turned the is off i don't always remember to turn it back on so then sometimes i do birds and flight photography and then the next day i'm shooting in a forest and i have only blurry images i'm like oh my god what happened here and then i see oh you turned the is off last night so i've definitely had that happen so that was the main two reasons why i left it on and then i did a bit of reading where they had a few arguments for leaving it on all the time one of the main arguments were that if you say that a fast shutter speed can remove any or freeze any sort of shake from your hands why would it not also freeze any sort of movement from the image stabilization that was the first point for it the second point that i found really interesting was that they said that your autofocus system actually sees the same what you are seeing they were basically saying if your camera is really shaky this is also what your autofocus is seeing so if your picture is much more stable and you're tracking the bird much smoother your autofocus will also benefit from that because it's easier for the autofocus to stay on the subject and i thought that was a very interesting point in so going forward i will definitely leave it on and i've always left it on in the past and i haven't really seen any difference so it'd be interesting we might want to test that out again but i think there's a lot of points for it to be left on why don't you guys let us know down in the comments do you leave is on or vr on or off when you're out shooting and maybe we'll get a bit of a group discussion and reach consensus once and for all leave it on or take it off one other thing i wanted to mention yet before we leave lens settings is the fact that a lot of lenses have a focus limiter when i'm doing flight shooting i always pay attention to this setting because it can really help the speed of your lens acquiring focus for example i know the bird's not going to fly so close to me in that minimum focus range so i don't want the lens if it misses target to have to hunt all the way back i only want it to focus in that certain sweet spot that i'm really looking for so i always think about okay if the bird's going to be further than that that far distance i might as well put it in that and it'll speed things along so now we've talked so much about the settings and the lens but we haven't actually talked about maybe the most important feature when it comes to birds and flight photography the autofocus and how to set it up and i think we really have to distinguish here between the more modern mirrorless cameras that have automated tracking that can actually track the bird by itself and the more traditional dslr cameras that we've used for many many years where you have to well more or less manually select the focus fields and then keep the focus field on the bird or the camera will focus like away from the birds so in the past i was using like a 5d or 1dx for instance i would usually select either like a small zone or i have like one autofocus field with the surrounding fields activated so when i was slightly slipping off the bird some of those autofocus fields around that field would still pick up the bird and help me to stay on the bird but all in all it was always quite difficult one of the things that can be really confusing in the canon um and probably in all the platforms is there's these like different like focus modes like different like dynamic kind of sliders and they're kind of not that intuitive like you'd think like oh i'm doing something that's fast i should put them all to the right to the faster setting but the reality is is you kind of want to do the opposite of that one of them is like if something's an erratic subject well birds don't fly erratically they fly pretty much in a straight line another one is do you want it to try to focus on new things if they come into the viewfinder well like if a bird goes behind a branch or a tree well no i don't want to focus on the tree you want it to once it's locked on the subject stay on the subject again over to the left and the other one is if they accelerate or decelerate quickly and again birds once they're flying that's pretty much the speed they're flying like they don't really change speed once they're flying so the truth is that most of those settings you want them to be kind of far to the left and sometimes that can help you at least once you've got the bird in focus to keep it in focus now one other thing we always had to do with dslrs which doesn't work that well with mirrorless cameras was what i would call pumping the focus where when you're trying to get the bird in focus if you can tell that it's not quite in focus you try to keep pumping the focus or back button if you will and get it to lock onto the bird but with mirrorless that technique is not as effective is it what do you think yen no i think that's a good point first about the cases that's definitely helpful and i felt myself doing the same thing on the 5d and actually on the r5 as well i'm both using the case one and i've dialed both of them manually back to minus one so they're a bit more slow and responding and that's working quite well for me and when it comes to the focus pumping i guess the idea on the dslr cameras was that if you focus the whole time the chance of the dslr camera losing the bird was just infinitely high pretty much so we always wanted to keep it sharp enough that it would find it again but we did not want to focus on it the whole time you kind of wanted to bump it bump it bump it until it comes to your critical zone and then focus and try to keep the focus on it for this short period of time with as you say with the new mirrorless cameras and the live tracking and especially the eye tracking on the canon and the sony a1 the birds eye tracking it's now oh there's the visitor it's now a lot easier for us to simply focus on the bird and then just keep the button pressed because i don't really have it that the eye autofocus just jumps off the bird completely like that almost never happens to me so now i definitely pre-focus on the bird when it starts flying or i can just see it in my viewfinder i press the button for me the back button that activates the animal eye tracking and then it will just track the bird basically the whole time and if it ever loses it i can quickly let it go and press again and i will find it again what you have to learn as well especially with the long lenses is that kind of hand eye coordination where you actually need to be able to look at the bird and then point your lens at the bird and have the bird in the viewfinder right away because the more focal length you have for flight shots the harder it is obviously i mean even getting a little swallow in the viewfinder at 840 millimeters in flight it's not something that anyone could just do there's a lot of coordination and training there that allows you to actually follow the swallow with your eyes and then get it in the camera because you probably didn't try and follow the swallow for like a minute through your viewfinder you kind of follow it with your eyes and when it comes to the right direction you rip up your camera and you try and get it mostly we've been talking about technical things and settings but when it comes to the skill of taking flight shots what i call it is you said hand eye coordination i call it eye lens coordination where you can see something moving even as fast as a swallow and lift your lens up and at the same time you know where you're going to need to be pointing at and track that object and that takes a lot of practice to get good at the other thing that is absolutely critical to getting good flight shots is pre-focusing and predicting where you're going to want to pick that bird up because if you're focused out at like 80 meters and then you try to lift your lens up and pick up a bird that's at 20 meters all you're going to see is a big blur you're not going to see anything and there's no chance you're going to be able to pick that bird up but if i know okay that's my zone over there that i want to try to pick the bird up it's about 30 40 meters or better yet just focus on something close by and then i'm basically waiting for something to fly into that range and then i can pick it up and then let it get into my sweet spot and then hammer away try to get a shot that's that's really the critical like technique of getting good flight shots so obviously the lens that you want to be using for flight shots heavily depends on your subject and you and i often use our 600 millimeter lens for instance for that region parrot we talked about a few episodes ago i was using the 600 actually on a tripod but if i had a choice the 600 wouldn't really be my preferred lens i would like to use the 100 to 500 for instance it's not always long enough so there's always a trade-off but generally speaking if you have a lighter lens with faster autofocus that will typically get you better results especially if it's more like traditional birds like ducks or herons or pelicans or something it depends on sort of where you're at in your photographic journey your own physical attributes but like obviously hand-holding a 600 millimeter lens is not going to be accessible for everybody and also if you're just getting started out you're not going to immediately get those skills so it's definitely going to be better to start with a shorter lens with slower flying birds for sure um you mentioned that that you know you're using the 100 to 500 and that's actually quite a big bonus because you've got that extra 100 millimeters then the 100 to 400 that i tend to use yeah so it would actually i would love to see canon make like a 200 to 600 like the sony or something that was lighter and faster and that could be an amazing flight lens but ultimately if i can get the more pixels on the subject and i think i can do it i'll probably be reaching for my 600. so now we've talked about the cameras and the kind of technical aspects and what you have to do but obviously we're out in nature there's also conditions that affect flight photography especially the sun and the wind are two things that are very important when it comes to fly photography because if it's not sunny it's less likely you will get the nice high shutter speed and often with flight photography the sky is at least partially involved and then sky or water on a cloudy day become a really unpleasant gray color so typically bluer skies with some clouds because that will look better will probably be the preferred choice when it comes to flight photography get the high shutter speed and the nice colors and also wind if you don't have the right wind direction you're just lost because birds just like to land and take off into the wind so it's very important that the wind comes from the right direction or you might only see bird bumps the whole day it's hard to predict where birds will fly past you so oftentimes you just end up with a background that's not very ideal and then the only way to get really pleasing birds and flight images is actually go out and find locations where you know if there's a bird flying through here i will get a really nice shot because there's like a really nice distant background for instance so a lot of times you and i would probably find flight shot opportunities but we don't actually go and take those images simply because we deemed the location unsuitable or we know we just wouldn't get a pleasant image here so it's all about finding those locations where you can have the right wing the right light behind you and also we know that if we get a bird through here we get a pleasant background this is what i call learning how to see learning how to see through a photographer's eyes you know when you're starting out as a photographer you wonder what you could do to take a better photo and sometimes it's like you couldn't have done anything better you were shooting in bad conditions the light was bad you didn't have the right parameters to anything you did you would have never come up with a great photo and learning to recognize what will potentially give you a great photo is one of the really important skills to develop and it comes from spending lots of time out in nature trying to photograph birds really sometimes there's conditions where i actually prefer shooting in bright overcast light with flight shooting as long as it's pretty bright because sometimes i find if i'm going to have like a not definitely not a sky background definitely not a water background but if they're going to be flying against trees sometimes i find that those flat light conditions can totally eliminate the shadows that can be so prevalent in flight shots if the light angles like this and the bird is flying this way it's flying into the light and when it gets into your sweet spot it's the perfect kind of angle for the bird so in a in a perfect scenario if you can imagine this with me the sun is coming this way the bird is flying this way and the wind is going that way slowing the bird down that's what i would consider to be the perfect conditions for flight photography to finish up our discussion about bird and flight photography today glenn and i just want to share our top tips with you now so you can also go out and nail those amazing flight images all right so let's start with the camera settings as we discussed the shutter speed is the most important thing and you're going to need to do whatever you need to do with your iso and your aperture you're usually going to be shooting fairly wide open but you might stop down like maybe one stop you're also going to want to use the camera's fastest drive mode when it comes to the settings on the lens we've already discussed is or no is we definitely think we should leave your is on and if your lens has a focus limiter it can be very helpful to set it to a larger distance so your camera doesn't have to hunt to hold back from infinity to minimum focusing distance when it's looking for the birds now the most important settings the autofocus settings it depends if you're using a mirrorless camera and especially a mirrorless camera that has the bird eye detect if you have that you're definitely going to want to use that if not you're going to be using a more manual approach and we probably want to put the auto focus point in the center with some type of assist points or a small zone around the center you're definitely going to want to be using continuous focusing or afc and you're going to want to look at the specific parameters of your camera's autofocus such as the tracking sensitivity and the different speeds and when it comes to the techniques in the field it's important that you pre-focus onto the distance that you expect the bird to pass through your viewfinder and it's also important that you train your eye lens coordination so you learn to look at the spot and then be able to point your camera directly at the spot without having to look through your viewfinder this will make it much faster for you to find those fast flying birds when it comes to hand-holding or tripods it really comes down to your personal taste but typically we would say it's much easier to follow birds if you're hand holding your camera and lens and lastly when it comes to the lighting conditions and the wind conditions these are really critical elements of course you want the sun behind you and you want the bird flying in to the light angle and when it comes to the wind the wind can definitely affect the direction that the birds will be wanting to take off and land and very importantly the wind you want it to be your friend you want to get it on your side and you want it to be blowing into the bird's face as they're flying so that it slows them down and makes your job easier and then when it comes to the location in the background it's important that you find the right spots where you know that you're going to get nice backgrounds you could have the best bird with the best pulse but if you're not in the right location you will just not get those really nice pleasing backgrounds all right folks well thanks so much for staying tuned into this episode where we talked all about birds in flight to reward you for your patience we've got a little giveaway we've got this beautiful book here the birds of instagram by david allen sibley and chris gatcom and look at that it's my shot on the cover we want to give away a few copies of this book to you guys the viewers of the bird photography show as a little thank you for watching our show for subscribing and for staying tuned in so what we need you to do if you want to enter to win a copy of this book is write us a comment down below and at the end of your comment tell us your favorite bird to photograph and also tell us where you live because this contest is open to member to people who live in north america or australia so i'm sorry to everyone else but the publisher that's where they were willing to send them so tell us your favorite bird and where you're from and we'll try to get you a copy of this beautiful book glenn and i will announce the two winners in one of our next videos we really hope you enjoyed today's insight into bird and flight photography and hope that you can utilize some of our tips in the field to take better bird images yourself let us know in the comments what's your preferred birth and flight photography combo and how have you gone with taking birds and flight images so far is it easy for you or are you struggling let us know also make sure to give it a thumbs up and share the video with all your friends and subscribe to the channel in our next episode we are going to be talking all about budget bird photography kits at different price settings so we hope you'll stay tuned for that thank you so much for watching this episode and we'll see you next time bye [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 36,938

Keywords: bird photography, jan wegener, birding, wildlife photography, which camera to buy, bird photography equipment, bird photography gear, birding gear, Canon EOS R5, animal eye AF, animal eye autofocus, canon mirrorless, RF 100-500, Canon RF 100-500 L IS, Sony A1, Sony Alpha 1, A1 vs R5, Sona A1 vs Canon R5, rolling shutter, birds in flight, birds in flight photography, flight photography, birds in flight settings, autofocus settings, image stabilisation, IS on or off

Id: 76Te-8KUigg

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021