Optic 2016: A Paradigm Shift in the World of Bird Photography

thank you for coming I hope you guys are enjoying it today right so paradigm shift a fundamental way in a change of thinking or doing things and this is not your father's oom lenses and this is an educational program I want to tell you exactly how to do birds in flight and it's going to require some things that aren't gear things in your control as a photographer but a little housekeeping I was here last year and for you guys on YouTube last year I have feelings by the way they said a little less roman and more of his images all right I agree with them video guys have been warned more of my images less of me all right so I got that out of my system so I've been doing this for over 30 years um when I first started out I do landscape photography macro photography for me the true test of a lens starts with wildlife photography it's like the Wild West fast shutter speeds things firing big huge glass well that's all changed in the last five to ten years it's no longer the realm of that big less so bird photography why the true test of any lens for me if it's sharp is birds why because they're fast they move fast and anybody can take a picture with a cell phone now of a stationary subject if we're close enough right selfies with animals but the real true test for me and what's changed is both the performance and affordability of these lenses so i'm a sigma pro for 10 y for 3 years now i wish then most of the images are a lot of the images you're going to see are with the sigma 3 to 800 affectionately known as my sigmund ster 13 pounds 10 years I own that thing I love that thing but I've put in on the bottom when I've used other lenses so we have to stop and talk about the gear because what I want to talk to you first the biggest mistake I see bird photographers wildlife doctors make time of day this has nothing to do with your gear you need to be out there a half hour before sunrise to two and a half hours after sunrise two and a half hours before sunset to a half hour after that's the beautiful light that's when you're going to get images like you're going to see here when the Sun first rises it's that beautiful orange glow right we get that your shadows are longer and soft so you need to be out there as it starts getting high and gets that you know harsh light stop shooting go scout go take siesta time so that orange glow I know I always see people taking that saturation layer and blasting it through the roof and post-processing well I know what time of day it was by the shadows you can't fake whether this is sunrise light first thing in the morning coming up you can't fake that later in the evening with storm clouds so these are things I'm going to teach you how to do and equally as important Sun at your back you can shoot cross light you can shoot backlit with practice but when you first get out there put your hands out like this anything in that zone is fair game to photograph if it's in a different direction move yourself physically morning or light look how soft the shadows are on my subject and those are things that you want to do so I'm combining the zone time of day that has nothing to do with my gear that's on you the photographer and I find the most underutilized tool in the camera bag is you I leave my locations in Yellowstone a lot of times at 9:00 9:30 I run photography tours Roman roamin photo tours all over the world I take four people I'm leaving the park at 9:30 traffic jam is building to come in so birds they are some spectacular creatures and they even get more iridescent at the right time of day so I want you to keep that in mind and these are some of my favorite birds I mean look I'm combining time of day late low light Sun at my back almost no shadows on the spoon though and it's just beautiful so let's talk about composition shooting angle head angle backgrounds again all things in your control not with your gear you don't want a busy background if you have a bird and a bush behind it you don't want the bush to compete with the bird portrait photographers we're taught not to shoot up or down at people well the same thing goes for birds if the birds this big hate to break it to you you need to sit down or lay down you don't want to shoot up or down at it and then head angle that's on you to wait for it to be in the right position so we pulled up on this lilac breasted roller out in Tanzania there was a thorn bush behind we moved five feet from the vehicle up five feet we all had the golden grass as a background I like my dark backgrounds here this is mangroves and that first morning light Sun at my back no competition with your subject now in the mangroves they nest I try to shoot and we'll talk about the exposure how because I shot and exposed correctly for the white the mangroves go dark and it's all about the birds so time of day now shooting down drop your tripod sit down I'm not the guy who's going to lay down on the ground I have six herniation from 25 years construction I might not get up you know but also longer focal length helps with the angle but just drop your tripod burrowing owls in Cape Coral Florida they're 9 inches tall you need to sit down no hate emails watch where you sit in Florida fire ants you've been warned alright ducks in the pond I see people going to zoos you know even our local zoos have these ducks and ponds at time of the year and I see everybody putting their tripod up this high no you got to sit down bring a garbage bag with you so you're not sitting on any of the poo you got to get lower you got to shoot at their angle I go to Florida three four times a year for my workshops I'm from I'm a Jersey boy lived here my entire life you know i the florida captain is telling me you know the water 65 degrees I said dude the water doesn't get the 65 degrees in my area ever I don't think I'm going in the water he's got a Down Park on it's 50 degrees it cracks me up and again the longer the angle I just took this a couple of weeks ago I am minimizing shooting down now shooting up on the focal length you know when you shorten that focal length up you're shooting up the tree it's just not the most pleasing composition music so look what happens when I use my 3 to 800 well not everybody's going to have a 3d 800 we're going to talk about gear but when I go to Florida and I want to shoot some airborne shots I go to the fishing here why these guys love flying by the pier at eyeball level most birds will fly low as well so these guys are cruising just above water height so I'm standing on the beach actually this is on the boat from my tour and we're just shooting directly at them hi boy head angle I am a card-carrying member of the head angle police what does that mean anything from a profile to right at you and everything in between I like I don't want to see the go away bird I don't want to see the back of the head portrait photographers never show the back of the head neither should you as a bird photographer so one of the nicest profiles in the bird community slightly at you - right at now realize this the more heads you introduce into a scenario the degree of difficulty goes up so I want you if you take anything from this program control what you can as a photographer what does that mean I'm looking at these guys alright I composed it got the dark mangroves got the nest good that's all great now I can't pay attention to every head these chicks are doing all sorts of crazy stuff non-stop well when I see mom lift her head in the correct position I fire the button but just because you can't control where all the heads will be memory has gotten cheap today how many of you in this room have that 512 megabyte car that you probably paid $200 for they're they're really inexpensive even for a hundred twenty-eight cards don't be afraid to use them so like I said all these things how far do you think I had to go for this image front yard three feet out of my dining room I actually shot this with the 180 macro I had to build a blind inside my dining room three feet to photograph this so not everything is exotic we do have a lot of shorebirds and other birds around us from now throughout most of the time then we get vent winter visitors as well so what are the common number one problem somebody comes up to me and says my bird images are soft it must be the lens that is usually culprit number 10 usually culprit number 1 is you it can be soft because you know camera shake motion blur birds fly at an average cruising speed again we're going a ver ajiz here 20 to 40 miles per hour well usually small and big cruising speeds they can reach speeds from anywhere in a fight situation 62 the Peregrine 200 miles per hour in a dive so we need speed here to do this depth of field is usually not the culprit and we'll talk about that but usually you never acquired focus so let's look at this bird this is probably shot at 6 3 f/8 max notice the wing position here notice the wing position on all my birds it's not like this straight out up or down down like this so think about it at a distance of about a hundred feet that I can fill the frame at 600 millimeter I probably have six feet a depth of field or there abouts @fa it's in there so depth of field usually isn't a problem even when this guy's coming at me how much depth of field do I need two feet right so rarely is depth of field a problem and I usually tell people wide open to f/8 is usually good more than enough for the birds and just don't get closer when I move that 800 millimeter close twenty one feet away a half inch of depth of field if you take don't get closer back up put your tailed extender on there's an app for that on your phone by the way depth of field master comm so everybody says well you're 80 feet away you're filling the frame you only have 11 inches of depth of field one when the birds only this big it's in there keeping it parallel to your sensor plane like I said you're the back of the camera you see my images parallel to you you need two feet of depth of field you're good rarely do you need more than that so this is you know perfect profile how much do I need perfect profile the way he flew and same thing I rarely rarely need more than FA unless I get closer so just keep that in mind when you're photographing so like I said the smaller the bird the degree of tracking them in flight I'm going to talk about the end but what was the solution what's one of the paradigm shifts in my program the first question I'm going to ask you when you walk up to my table and show me a blurry picture is what was your ISO that's the first question I'm going to ask you why well what was your shutter speed raise the ISO we're not film shoot errs anymore today's digital cameras have incredible performance I use to 1dx bodies right now I had two 1d Mark 3 bodies I have just purchased the 7d mark two recently because speed you need to have a fast enough shutter speed to capture this that's about speed about 125 hundredths to 1/32 hundredth of a second shutter speed what's a good speed for an entry level bird photographer for flight I'm going to go with 116 hundredth of a second or faster I roll out of bed at ISO 800 and I'll push it to 1600 if my lighting conditions don't improve but realize that the pro end bodies the 1dx handle noise better but noise reduction software is getting incredible you need speed why do you need speed you're photographing this and you decide that I need ISO 200 because there's enough light well does this a couple of seconds later how can you change your ISO that fast and this is one of my favorite things that I like to talk about we're photographing this duck there is a school of pro photographers that say the right ISO for the right situation I hate that guy I don't believe in that whatsoever why the Boy Scout motto be prepared so I'm going to give you a scenario with this image I'm at ISO 800 132 hundredths of a second the other Pro is right here same gear same camera ISO 200 116 hundredths of a second or less I don't Roman the Ducks trying to fall asleep why do you need 132 hundredths of a second a bald eagle comes out of sky grabs that duck and flies away you know what you see then I'm dancing I'm dancing I am rubbing it in so bad why in my 25 plus years of doing this not one editor not one publisher said Roman you had 132 hundredths of a second you only needed one 1600 of a second give it back anybody in this room I lecture all over the country anybody in this room ever been back asked to give back shutter speed anybody please I'm looking for the first person so why are we so set on being at iso 100 or 200 set it and forget it it's one less mistake you can make out in the field it's one less button you have to look for this is what I'm talking about I'm trying to simplify and rule out mistakes you can make speed rules shutter speed is your friend there is no penalty for having one four thousandth of a second shutter speed one thirty two hundredth of a second shutter speed this is action that happens quickly they're fighting I'm just focused on acquiring locking and unloading so speed is a going to be a constant theme that you're going to hear from me because like I said this fight lasts only a couple of seconds and they're probably doing 40 50 60 miles an hour we need to freeze that motion so Osprey nests everybody says well what's the difference between the two lenses and I'll be here for the rest of the weekend actually Monday to answer those questions but the sport is heavier you know much heavier than what the contemporary is but now let's talk about paradigm shift they're working with teleconverters and autofocusing this is handheld with my 1d mark 3 the sport and the 1.4 Sigma teleconverter handheld think about a 125 hundredths of a second my motion is frozen all I have to do is try to acquire capture and lock on my subject now I'm focused on that so my second most controversial subject what mode manual mode I have no idea why my camera has any other mode by the way for the record P does not stand for professional all of them can work but here's where manual mode shines particularly in birds and flight they're going to fly in your zone Sun at your back your hands out you got all that checked off but in that zone there's dark water there's tan sand there's black mangroves there's blue sky in any other mode your camera is going to get fooled because if it reads that background you're you're in trouble so the Spoonbill he's up against the blue water what I do usually when I get out into the field before I get out in the field Suns at my back check Suns low check set it in manual mode pick f8 5 6 6 3 1 pick pick one now I'll simply look at a car in the parking lot or in my zone white car in particular and take a shot of it check my histogram I am correctly exposed for whites now adjust my shutter speed until it's where it has to be no blown highlights fancy word for blankies and I adjust my shutter now I could go out there and why did I choose white most birds the pretty ones have light in them if you get a bald eagle shots and your blacks or Browns are impeccable but your heads blown out you might as well throw it out no detail in the head set it for whites most birds have whites under the wingtips somewhere so you want to do that because here he's flying in my zone up against water what happens if he goes against the mangroves aperture priority shutter speed priority there they're all fooled they're going to compensate for the dark mangroves is the picture about the mangroves or is about the spoonbill it's about the bird and even if he goes up against the sky it's all good so why are people afraid of manual mode when the light changes you know I've been looking through my viewfinder like I said almost 30 years now I see the light change out in the field I see it hide behind the cloud I see it at sunrise at sunset I my brain is thinking like my camera so when the lights changing everybody's saying well then I got to move my shutter speed you know f-stop all about this neck no because I'm at ISO 800 and let's say thirty two hundredths of a second shutter speed well if it goes behind the cloud I take a peek at my meat of my meter left right center it's somewhere on your camera your light meter I make a note where it is so when it goes behind the cloud let's use this as an example one in two thirds over that's the correct exposure that's what it's telling me no blown highlights check your camera and your meter every meter is not created equal but you do two histogram check to the light to the right is white to the left is black well you know what I only care where the right side is it's not about the mangroves for me I don't care where the left side is so once I do that if the Sun drops you're going to see your meter go or the Sun hides behind a cup it's going to go boom boom boom you know drop down to zero well I just dumped shutter speed on my cannon get that needle back up to one and two-thirds guess what it's the correct exposure for white does that make sense to you guys as it starts to set the same thing is going to happen your meters going to start dropping down and you're just going to be sacrificing shutter speed but always keeping it at that point because that's the correct exposure for white I really want that's manual people make it too worrisome they worry about it I call this aperture light I'm just thinking about dumping shutter speed not much anything else because I have enough of it so keeping needle lined up I took it like that whether he flies or whatever but now it drops I can quickly dump shutter speed get it to where I have it lined up and it's the correct exposure so I hope that makes sense for you guys so gear I'm going to start spending your money this is in my yard in New Jersey we're on the sidewalk I set up a 12-inch carving a hundred feet away from me and I shot it at 200 millimeter on a full frame this is my 1 DX so it's full-frame 400 millimeter that's still not filling much of the frame 600 millimeter we're getting better especially if he flapped the swings put it on a crop body now we're getting pretty darn good right so there is a reason for that long focal length and at that distance he's in it's all sharp so now the were a world of those little birds in your backyard now they're fair game so 600 millimeter crop body the 7d mark 2 and the 1.4 teleconverter oh yeah now we're talking and the only thing I've ever asked from my lenses are you sharp yep he's having a bad hair day but it's definitely sharp so and remember this is handheld I've handheld my 300 to 800 twice in my life it was two times too many but because I had a fast enough shutter speed I was able to do it so part of that thing and again my 300 it's 13 pounds I know a bunch of you went by the table we have two out there and picked it up well if you decide to go for that one give up your gym membership and just pick up your lens all day long you'll be fit as can be and I'll probably save you a few bucks the sport comes in at six point three pounds well I can hand hold that lens I'm not the smallest guy on earth but now I finding myself grabbing the contemporary why four point three pounds on a crop body gives me 960 millimeters focally that's more than my 3-day hundred on the straight body and it weighs a fraction of the weight by the way these big lenses I'm not saying they're not sharp I'm not saying I don't love the primes I like the versatility of a zoom but when I get on with my 3 to 800 and this is what mine actually looks like and how you need to set it up so it's weightless the air lines look at me like I'm out of my mind and internationally I'm not sure I can get on it to an international flight with this anymore because of some of the weight restrictions I title this you spent how much for that lens we've all been there but you know part of that is you now this little birds the birds you wouldn't even look at before now when you go down to the beach they're fair game because even though this is with the three to eight hundred technically with my seventy mark - and my 150 to 600 contemporary I have more focal length reach now 960 millimeter so all these little birds and this one was the three to eight hundred with my 1.4 teleconverter on manually focused same with this one so again that monster Reach is something you will truly enjoy and it really opens up a whole new world the backyard birds most birds are pretty comfortable with you approaching to about 50 75 feet they all have their own comfort zone but these guys are prolific and now this is when I really fell in love with the zoom lens I'm not sitting there saying okay here's your zone acquire it right there finish shooting there no you're requiring it somewhere over here and in the field you'll see here we say wait for it wait for it so AI servo continuous high-speed shutter wait for it so you're tracking here at 300 millimeter to under finding it keep bumping that shutter I use the focus button when I'm doing it but then you wait for it wait firing a hole as it's ripping through take your finger off somewhere over here and follow through so I can't judge a winged position I can't go click oh there it is perfect not going to happen so and the smaller the bird degree difficulty goes up dark were dark bird dark water again practice I didn't roll out of bed and do this the first time but to tell you the truth digital with the high ISO settings and I'll tell you a true story first time I went out to New Mexico to photograph the cranes I took 92 rolls of 36 exposure film iso 100 come home with two images i was proud of a flying bird not two boxes two birds i almost threw up I went back 15 years later Digital Hyatt well that's where the high ISO philosophy came from i stunk at iso 100 let's Jack this baby up because we can put it to ISO 800 I had 2500 keepers that first morning now I didn't like every wing position I threw them out but the whole point here is they are travel friendly now I can take my sport and contemporary instead of the three to eight hundred and nobody on the airlines looks at me like I'm crazy so that's something that you have to take into consideration now so this is a three to eight hundred shot right tripod gimble head very proud of that love the dark background there's the contemporary shot well I'm really proud about one two and it's really sharp so for a fraction of the cost I'm hand holding it on the boat I don't have to worry about travel restrictions the days of photography being for those big primes it's over I'm not saying there's not a use for them I'm not saying that they're not awesome I'm just saying now people who are in college or planning to get into wildlife photography or on a budget like I was heck if I had bought the three to eight hundred when I was first married I wouldn't be married anymore you know it was six thousand four hundred at the time when I bought it I had two kids little kids you know so family things I worry about how quick can I acquire track Lock and Load so I'm standing on the boardwalk at the st. Augustine Alligator or no Gator land I hear an osprey hit the water I don't see him I hear him and I swing around there's frame number one two and I shot off 14 in Ron just but this was my record 44 images in a row all sharp now there's a little practice behind us I just sold two camera bodies with over 275,000 shutter actuations all right I admitted how many shutter actuations are on there but I'm going to phrase this the way I like to always break it down you had a week worth of piano lessons did I invite you to Carnegie Hall you had two weeks worth of piano lessons that you're still not getting in people in Carnegie Hall practice 80 hours a week anytime I can pull my lens out and go photographing I don't have that oh I photograph this before it's keeping my skills sharp all right so we're always going to start raising the bar and that's with flight so listen I have every bird portrait left right you know after the pretty pictures I'm like okay we have the ISO parallel to the plane we're looking for action I'm an action junkie and well and bird photography in particular but not the shutters are going it's an adrenaline rush it really is so we got them dancing we got them eating eating's good eating is fine this is like playing whack-a-mole with a bird by the way they come up out of the bottom of water flip it up you're just like here it is and this is out in Long Island for us and I think tis the season now it's maybe a little late for the oyster catchers but certainly the turns so of course then I want mating so the holy grail for me as a bird photographer is eating something mating and flying I came close I was like oh here boy I swore I was going to retire if I pulled it off as in half a yet so now you're going to the birds in flight so nothing changes you keep that Sun at your back you keep your zone wind direction their airplanes they want to land and take off into the wind so any of these directions left right if it's Suns at your back and the winds hitting your back you're going to get this pose it's perfect so any of those positions are good and like I said that's right at my back but when I know what wind direction I have I know where they're going to land so I know which way they're going to fly these are not accidents I position the group in the zone to know which way they're flying so again winds pretty much right at my back maybe hit in my left ear as the sun's going down no flyaway Birds this is what I mean this is sharp but it's flying away from you move yourself and get into the zone and we realize that a lot of these with the contemporary are hand held on a boat so there you go little big small vert start with the big guys but start tracking early like I said you don't want to wait so I'm you know looking over there and i zoom out to 300 because if you think finding something at 600 millimeter is easy it's not it's like you know looking through that you know so start at 300 zoom out keep acquiring the focus and like I said once you lock that focus you should just continue through now my wife has no idea this next slide is coming but she knows how much this one means to me for proper hand holding technique drink the here I'm gonna go what maybe margaritas can work wine I'm not so sure why I'm hand-holding up against that beer gut like this I start tracking like that it's firing all bonefire away it's great I got an excuse to drink beer and I'm sticking to that story by the way but you're combining everything that you're doing in that moment time of day Sun at your back wind angle knowing all that makes your job a lot easier and it's not as hard as it sounds this is your cautionary tale speed I mentioned speed one of the things I didn't really talk about too much was speed of your card today's cameras are incredibly fast frame per second rate 12 on the DX 10 on the 70 mark - they're pushing the limits of how many frames per second these cameras can do you don't want a card that's slow so I can only stay friends with him if I don't mention his name so we will there's a Nikon shooter with a d3 me with my 1d mark 3 we both have the Sigma 3 - 800 on we're on tripods were in the water we see this Osprey dive out of our zone and we're all like oh man we think he got a fish he goes all I'm almost full reaches into his bag Greg there's a card changes his card so we're both standing there and for the first time in my life we're both like come on get into the zone move move cut in front of us and he does so from me you hear I filled the buffer of 30 on the 1d Mark 3 I have to up wing positions like this to downwind position like this I heard him go boom curse curse radio edit couple of things I can say you know bah-bah-bah why he reached into his bag and he pulled out a card that read or wrote slow and he didn't get the shot memories cheap today you need to think about that when you're out there in the field because this action happens fast and furious so I hope you have you should have the settings here of how to do this for yourself yes I make it look pretty easy I've done this a lot but you can do it and I know this because people who go on workshops with me they get these images takes them a while but they get it so if you have any questions I'll be here tomorrow as well at the sigma table so stop by and ask me thank you very much whether you're a hobbyist or professional bnh has the answers to your questions experience a world of technology at our new york city secrets connect with us online or give us a call our staff of experts is happy to help

Channel: B&H Photo Video

Views: 285,969

Rating: 4.8349452 out of 5

Keywords: bh photo, BH Photo Video, b&h, B&H, Optic, b and h, bird photo, bhvideos, BH Photo, Roman Kurywczak, 2016, birder, optic 2016, photo

Id: 58G-ttOw6PM

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2016