Mastering BIRDS IN FLIGHT Photography - Bird Photography Secrets Revealed - Jan Wegener Vlog

[Music] flying one of the most fascinating aspects when it comes to birds but it's not always easy to take great birds and flight images is it so today I want to share with you my most successful tips tricks and techniques when it comes to birds in flight photography so you too can take amazing birds and flight shots [Music] before we get into the details of how you can take amazing flight shots I want to say one thing most birds and flight images are staged or planned to some degree it's very rare that you just walk around with your camera look up see a beautiful bird flying past and that it does like a beautiful pulse for you most of the time when you walk around you will just get a bird with the wings up or wings down kind of looking up towards the birds so that's just something to keep in mind the more you plan it the more you prepare to be in the right place at the right time the better your flight shots will be unless you're doing something like artistic blurs hands-down the most important aspect when it comes to your bird photography is your shutter speed if your shutter speed is not fast enough you simply won't get great birds and fly shots the birds are moving you're moving there's a lot of movement a lot of action so at the very very least you need at least a thousand of a second s you shutter speed ideally I would recommend to use two to thousands of a second or four thousand of a second as you can because it will just give you a lot more scope for slight errors and will ensure that all your birds and fly shots are nice and sharp how do we get these fast shutter speed simply by opening up our lens to something like f4 f5 point six increasing the ISO enough so that we end up with a nice fast shutter speed but whenever you're setting up the exposure remember we want to expose nice and far to the right and that's especially true for flight shots so we can have a lot of details especially in the under wings and darker parts of the bird while I recommend using just one out-of-focus point for perch birds I think for birds and flights is recommendable to use one point and then have the surrounding points activate it as well use some sort of zone out of focus depending on your camera system this will be slightly different but the basic idea is to use one point and have surrounding points activated so that helps you keep track of the bird when you're panning with the bird if you just have one point activated chances are that you're really easily slipping off the birds onto the background and missing all the shots now that we've already spoken about autofocus point which out-of-focus point and the surrounding points should you actually be using well in my opinion for most cameras the center autofocus point is still the best one and for flight you generally I think it's the best one to use as well because you don't always know which direction of birds come from so being in the center usually works quite well however when the birds come closer to you or you know the birds only gonna fly from like the left to the right I would probably be tempted to pick a point that slightly off the center so I am more certain that I can stay on the bird's head when I'm moving along with the bird so if I'm not sure what's happening I usually use the center out of focusing point but if I can see a pattern or I can see the birds are always having the head in a certain part of my frame I would then try to have my autofocus point kind of edging towards that area to make sure that my focus hits the bird's head and not the wings while most autofocus systems have become pretty good at tracking Birds especially when they kind of fly past you sideways they still struggle if the bird is flying directly at you and there's simply not much you can do about it except for keep trying trying trying and eventually get some shots when it comes to birds in flight photography I would also recommend to use back button focusing if you're not sure what it is or how to use it or how to set it up check out my video from last week that I linked for you up there and also down there in the description where I talk you through all the advantages of back button focusing and why I think it's so great to use for birds and flight photography when it comes to birds of flight photography there's usually two different techniques that you can use to get amazing birds and flights photos the first technique is panning with the bird where you're standing somewhere maybe exposed on a cliff on the beach you can see the birds from a distance coming in towards you you're following them with your eyes locating them in a viewfinder focusing on the birds and then getting your shots when they're in the right spot and this technique also requires not as fast shutter speeds simply because you're moving with the bird so you can sometimes get away with even like an eight hundredths of a second without blurring the bird there's another important skill when it comes to the panning technique for birds in flight and that is your ability to track birds with your eyes and then instantly find a bird in the viewfinder and start focusing we do not want to focus on a bird when it's really far away from us we want to wait until it's close to us in the perfect spot then acquire focus and take the shot personally I like to check the birds with my eyes when it's away in the distance have my camera in front of my face check the birds and when it's close enough I instantly find a bird and if you find out look through it acquire focus and shoot and get my shot if you're relying on having the bird interview fine at all times I think you're prone to missing shot simply because it's very hard to keep a fast-flying birds in your viewfinder for a long period of time because the bird might break off fly up or fly down and with the long lens especially it's hard to keep track of the bird at all times I also made a video about the skill of locating the birds in the viewfinder very quickly you can see it up here the number one skill to never miss the shot again well show exactly what I do to instantly find two birds in the viewfinder and be able to check the birds with my eyes and then have them interview find out right away to not miss any shots and to also not lose the birds while I'm trying to track them [Music] the second technique I want to talk about is where you pre focus on a certain area and when the bird appears just before that area you fire away and when it shoots through your viewfinder you get as many shots as you can and hopefully you get one nice shot in that sequence of images and because you're stationary now and the bird just shoots through your viewfinder you need to have much higher shutter speeds I would recommend at least the four thousand of a second for that technique if you're using slower shutter speeds most of your images will just have motion blur I've used the pre focusing technique very successfully in many occasions one of the most amazing was when we were up on a Cape York Peninsula trying to photograph golden shoulder parrots and they would always come back to the same termite mount every day so I studied their behavior and once I could see a pattern where the bird would come in and how it landed I started to pre focus on an area where I thought it would make a really cool pause probably 10 to 20 centimeters behind the termite mound and every time the bird would come from the tree event fly through my fame I would fire away after a few missed rice I actually got a really amazing shot with the birds just having the wings up giving me a really cool and unique image this also works if you're just out and about you see a bird on a perch and you kind of see that it's getting ready to take off so just before it takes off you're either focus on the bird or on an area next to the perch where you think the birds will gonna fly through the moment you see it's gonna take off you pressed your shutter button it's gonna shoot through your frame hopefully you get some images for the pre focusing technique to work you also need to activate back button outer focusing if you're using your shutter button to focus your camera will try to refocus when you're trying to take your image but with the pre focusing we don't want them we'll use back button elder focusing pre focus on the area and then don't touch the focus anymore if the bird is approaching we only use the front shutter button to take images without adjusting the focus at all [Music] birds generally make the nicest poses just before their land or just after their take off where they fan that tail they have their wings out or their wings down and it looks really nice often birds will do like a little pooh stretch their wings maybe shake their feathers and then they jump off if you know this behavior pattern it will be much easier for you to time your shots and to be ready when the bird is ready to take off there's another crucial factor that impacts our ability to take great flight shots and that's the weather I said it before we need really fast shutter speed when it comes to photographing birds in flight so we need this in life if it's a dark dull day you will likely not get great shot simply because the shutter speeds will be low so you will be struggling and getting blurry images and also the images will just look dull and not very inviting generally we have a lot of sky or water in the background of our flight shots in these sort of areas only look nice from this nice blue color in them from a nice blue kind of day so generally I would find a nice sort of sunny day and then shoot in the early morning or the early evening we can still have enough shutter speed but also have nice soft light if the Sun is too high up in the sky and the light is getting harsh you will get really dark shadows on the underside of the bird or the winged shadow kind of cutting through the bird's face which just doesn't look good so you definitely want nice soft and low light to get amazing bird images there's one more factor and that is the wind if the wind is not in your favor you won't be able to get any good flight shots the reason is that birds love to take off and land into the wind so if the wind is blowing from behind you away from you that's perfect because all the birds will land towards you and will take off towards you but if the wind is blowing into your face you're in for a rough day because most birds will fly away from you and land away from you so you will get a lot of bum shots and not very many interesting shots so all the wind of your planning of flight photography session what's the best gear for flight photography for Canon for instance there is a beautiful 5.6 400 millimeter lens that sheep has fast out-of-focus and a superior ability to track birds and tags fantastic images and it almost weighs nothing it's just this small and it's really easy to handle that all times generally speaking the ideal bird in flight lands if small light has a relatively wide open aperture but with the new modern technology and being able to bump up your ISO you can even get away with using at F 5.6 lens when it comes to your camera we definitely want a camera with a high frame rate I'm using a 5d Mark four but that it's the one time where it kind of feel limited with the camera only being able to shoot like six or eight frames per second this is where the faster cameras really shine the more frames per second the better basically on the faster camera like a 1 DX mark 3 or one of the fast Nikon cameras you might get six or eight different wing poses each time the wind goes up and down if you're using a smaller lens like a 3 or 400 millimeter lens I would definitely recommend to handled if you're using a big 5 minute or 600 millimeter lens like me the decision becomes a little bit more tricky because you have more movement if you're hand holding your lens but it's also difficult to hand hold the lens for extended periods of time so in those cases are often resort to using a tripod with a Wimberly head having it fairly loose so I can still move it in all directions but don't have to carry the weight at all times now that we learned all about the techniques of birds and flight photography I want to share a few stories with you of my most successful sort of birds in flight photography moments one was where it took some amazing shots of welcome swallows and a place near Melbourne I noticed that when I stopped my car the swallows were kind of laying on the car were kind of fascinated with a little aerial on top of the car and kind of started hovering over the rear windscreen so when I noticed that I thought that's pretty cool I might be able to actually get some fly shots because I tried previously and trying to get a little swallow that's just flying past you breathe the panning technique is almost in so I actually noticed that the smallest world so picking on little thistles in flight next to my car so grab one of the thistles attached it to my car set up my camera on the tripod next to the car and just waited for the swallows to return and it didn't take long and a whole bunch of swallows probably about 20 started to hover above the car pick on a thistle even try to land on a fizzle and because now I slowed down the action by giving the birds a focal point of the thistle the swallows weren't going this fast anymore no they were slowly hovering above my rear windscreen waiting their turn to pick on a thistle and I could forget some amazing images and lastly I want to show you these really cool shots of yellow tab like cockatoos in flight one of my favorite birds and these were just taken by chance pretty much I noticed that when I was driving past the dirt road that there's a whole bunch probably 20 yellow tab black cockatoos just sitting in a field and when I stopped to look at the birds and notice that every two three minutes one of the birds would kind of fly up do a little circle and land again so set up my camera they're actually inside the car on the tripod so it was very hard to maneuver but it was my only chance to not spook the birds so set up the camera and whenever bird would take off or land I would fire away try to pan with the bird tracking the birds through my car window very hard but I got some really cool shot in this case my ability to find the birds in the viewfinder and checking them was crucial if you're struggling to find a bird in the viewfinder in a confined space like a car it's impossible to get to shot the birds long gone before you even have it any viewfinder hope I could give you a nice insight into birds and flight photography and show you different techniques and idea of how you can get amazing birds and fly shot you don't always have to go out and just find birds in the sky flying around you you can also go around and find birds and study their behavior to see if they always land on the same spot and then use the pre focusing techniques where you focus near that perch getting the bird just before it lands with some really cool poses as I said in the beginning with birds and flight usually the more time you put into studying the birds and finding the right spots the more successful you will be for instance it's very hard to get a beautiful shot of an SI eagle just flying past but it's very easy to get cool shots of seeing where they're being fed or near fishermen so always find the right spots and you will come away with some amazing images so hope with these tips tricks and techniques you're now equipped to take some amazing bird images yourself give me a thumbs up for this video let me know in the comments how you're going with birds and flight photography is that something that you love doing are you struggling with it let me know subscribe to my channel somewhere down there and I will see you in one of our next videos bye

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 43,278

Keywords: bird photography, australia, vogelfotografie, jan wegener, birding, photography, birds, tutorial, equipment, exposure, manual mode, aperture, depth of field, wildlife photography, nature photography, back button focus, auto focus, back-button focus, focus modes, focussing, canon, canon 600 L IS, 5D Mark IV, 5D Mark III, LensCoat, af-on button, af-on, AI-Servo, AF-S, bird photography equipment, birds in flight, birds in flight photography, flight photography

Id: ne-vkwitp9k

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2020