Taking Sharp Bird Photos | In depth

today i want to share 13 of my top tips for getting sharper images of wildlife and birds and i know what you're thinking 13 that sounds like it's going to be a long video think about it like this though it's going to be an epic video there's some real gems of information in there that are going to help you a lot for those of you that are impatient though don't worry i've got five of my top tips bulleted at the beginning of the video those are going to get you on your way fast [Music] the most important thing for getting sharp images is to use a high shutter speed so for perch birds i'll usually use something like 1 1600 of a second and if i can get away with it if the light allows i'll go higher what does it harm me nothing at all i'll go all the way up to 1 4 000 of a second for birds in flight tip number two is to use the right aperture we typically can't use our lenses wide open we have to stop them down by at least one stop but go out and test your equipment and find out where the sharpest point on your lens is tip number three is to use the right depth of field if the subject or the bird is really close to you and that depth of field is too small you're going to lose a lot of shots because the focus system just won't be able to compete with the movement in that subject so dial in a bit more aperture don't worry too much about using your lens at the sharpest possible aperture just make sure that you're using enough depth of field to cover at least the head and face of whatever animal you're shooting tip number four and this one might be obvious to a lot of you is to use the right focus mode i hear a lot of people with a little beep beep in their camera sitting in some bird hides i'm thinking to myself what are you doing that thing is moving around in front of you you can't use single shot focus on something like that you have to switch it over to continuous focus tip number five is to use mechanical stabilization so here i'm not talking about lens or body stabilization although that's really useful you'll probably have that switched on i'm talking about things like bean bags if you're in a car in a hide i think talking about things like door mounts tripods monopods it really helps so much especially with the really big long heavy lenses so those are my top five tips for getting sharper images of wildlife and birds and if you use them regularly i'm certain your results will improve but if you've got a few minutes watch through to the end of the video because i've got 13 tips in total and i go into much more detail about advanced subjects advanced topics and how to get better results i think it will be worth your while if you feel like leaving now please hit the like button think about subscribing if you want to see more content like this and leave me a comment down below what do you do to get sharper images it's quite difficult these days it's easy in a lot of ways but it's also difficult in a lot of ways because the focal lengths are getting longer look at that 800 f11 that's just come out of the canon stable and then the megapixel counts are getting higher and that actually makes it more important that we take better care when we take images now you probably know me as a wildlife photographer maybe a bird photographer and my subjects typically involve fast moving objects so birds and flights are one of my favorites i also enjoy any kind of action and wildlife i like to capture behaviours and when you have to capture behaviors you really need to start using higher shutter speeds because those subjects are moving around but at the same time the change in technology in this gear has also made it imperative that we use higher shutter speeds while it used to be the case that we could use the reciprocal rule of lenses to think about our shutter speeds so this is a 400 millimeter lens i could use one four hundredth of a second so one divided by the focal length and that would give me a reasonably sharp image in the old days but things have changed for the reasons i've said and now i wouldn't be comfortable at least unless i was shooting at least 1 800th of a second so i doubled that reciprocal rule and most of the time i shoot higher shutter speeds than that i actually shoot 1 16 hundredth of a second probably as a minimum for bird and flight and actually most bird photography if i can get away with it and then if i can if it's bright enough i'll actually shoot even higher than that i'll go for one two thousandths one two thousand five hundredth of a second and up to four thousandth of a second that really makes a big difference to image sharpness just increasing that shutter speed and it's because the lens is so long and it's because the pixels have got smaller in the old days pixels used to be massive and if you think about that you think about the the artifacts of movement so we've got human camera shake or people shaking the camera because they've got shaky old hands like me and then you've got subject movement in front of the lens that's all the same none of that's changed but what has changed is our focal lengths have typically got longer and our pixels have got much much much smaller so that massive pixel in the old days that tiny cadence of movement was a small proportion of the overall size of the pixel so you didn't get a lot of mushy blur in that pixel but now with a tiny pixel the movement's the same the shake is the same but the pixel is tiny and what that means is that movement as a proportion of the size of the pixel is much bigger and therefore the blur is greater and you may have noticed this in your shots you'll see a mushiness and part of it's noise and part of it's this pixel blur that i'm talking about so one of the ways you can get away from that is to really ramp up that shutter speed when you're taking shots even shots of stationary subjects the next part of this equation is aperture and aperture is really important not least because a wider aperture can help us keep our shutter speed up by letting so much more light into the camera body but also because it's not always true that these lenses actually operate at their best at their widest aperture setting so this is an f 2.8 lens and while that's a very advantageous thing to have in low light situations i can let more light in and i can therefore keep my shutter speed high it doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually sharpest at f 2.8 typically we need to stop the lens down generally by about a stop or so to get the best image sharpness out of them and that's especially true of zoom lenses because of all the moving components so stopping the lens down will help to increase your image quality and your sharpness but we need to go further because we also have to consider depth of field depth of field is really important for smaller subjects that are close to us so if you think about a bird that's perched near us or something like that on a twig and it's turning its head and it's moving around a lot you'll have a focus point hopefully on its head and hopefully that'll acquire the eye but it won't necessarily because it'll acquire the closest point under the focus point and if the bed that the head of the bird is turned it might actually acquire the point of the beak or the fur in front of the eyes something like that on an animal and that doesn't help so what we can do to ameliorate that problem is to increase our depth of field by dialing in even more aperture and i'd typically advise something like f 5.6 to f 8 for the most part if you've got the available light and although that won't necessarily be the sharpest point on your lens that extra depth of field will mean you'll get far more keepers when the bird moves around or the animal moves its head around than you would otherwise so where you can dial in more aperture but still keep your shutter speed as high as you can with that aperture it's a balancing axe like most photography my next tip is on focus modes and most people are aware of this but in case you're not it's important to understand that cameras can focus in different ways so if you're focusing on a tree for instance a static object you can get the camera to focus on it and then stop focusing so that you can take the picture and in canon language that's called one shot and it will have different names in different brands of camera but it basically means you'll focus on the subject once and then it will stop focusing that's fine for static objects but with wildlife we're not going to be photographing static objects for the most part we're going to be photographing little birds and trees where the branches are moving or the birds are moving their heads so we're going to be shooting wildlife that's that's running around and doing stuff or eating for instance and then we need to continuously track and focus on that thing constantly so there's another mode in canon cameras called af servo servo mode and you can just think of it as continuous focus mode that is the mode that we need to employ for most wildlife photography now there's a downside to that mode it's not generally as accurate and it typically works by just hunting back and forth in very small increments and where you've got a paper thin depth of field as i mentioned already it can go in and out in and out on that eye of the animal that you're tracking so you need to be able to manage that and as i said earlier you manage that with depth of field but it's important you use your camera in that mode because it's going to give you the best chance of getting keepers when you photograph your wildlife so while we're on the subject of focused systems it's important to realize there's more setup involved in your focus system with these cameras you can play around with the accuracy of that focus versus the release rate of the shutter so what i mean by that is let's say you've got a bird perched in a tree and it's ready to take off and you're ready and you're waiting you're waiting for it that situation might call for highly accurate focus but if it does what happens if the bird moves very quickly is the camera might not be able to acquire focus and you'll lose the shot the camera just won't fire you'll press this trigger button here the shutter button and nothing will happen that's a very typical situation and you don't want that so what you can do is you can go into your focus system and you can actually set a balance between accuracy and release or speed and that's an important consideration depending on what kind of subject you're looking at so if you think thinking about this bird that's about to fly you probably want it accurate the first couple of frames and then you just want the camera to fire at whatever it sees because you'll start to lose track of it in the viewfinder as this thing's exploding into action so i'd advise trying to put that setting actually into your custom menu so that it's easily accessible to you and you can change it to whatever subject you're photographing and whether you think it needs to prioritize release if it's a very important documentary sort of moment you want to you want to get the shot at any cost even if it's a little bit blurred and if it's not going to be like that you might want to prioritize accuracy in your auto focus system so stick that in your custom menu settings so that it's easily accessible and you can manage that as and when you need to we've talked about cameras having high megapixel sensors these days and a lot of pixel density and the detrimental effects of that and you may also have noticed this increasing emphasis on image stabilization and how important it is and that's as a result partly of people wanting to reduce the effects of this tiny pixel on on their photograph and the sharpness of that photograph so traditionally you might have used a tripod like this to support your lens but a lot of the time people can't do that or don't want to do that or they're in situations where they can't actually carry a tripod and then image stabilization becomes really important and it's becoming more complicated than it was it used to be the case that you'd just turn a switch on and that would be your image of stabilization active but now we have to think about image stabilization in the lens we have to think about it sometimes in the body as well we have to think about how they work together and we also have to think about what mode of use we're actually using here so on this canon lens i've got three image stabilization modes mode one is for hand holding and moving around like this mode two is for panning shots where i'm going to be moving through one axis and you don't want that image stabilization to be active on this panning axis but you do want it to be stable up and down and then in mode three in this particular lens what it does is it damps down the movement in the viewfinder the floating movement in the viewfinder and that can make it easier to track very erratic subjects it's really important not to ignore traditional means of stabilization like a good solid tripod and a nice head that allows you to get smooth movements and nice steady shots and where you can't use a tripod i typically use a tripod in fixed positions or in hides or in blinds where i can't use a tripod then i'll try at least to use a beanbag maybe a monopod and where i can't use those i might be in a vehicle for instance i'll use a vehicle door mount all of those things will help me steady up my shot but one of the best investments you can make is a good tripod and if you don't want to use a tripod then the next best investment you can make for vehicle shooting like we do a lot of in south africa is to get a bean bag and place it over your windowsill and then also this is really important for those south africans out there who don't turn their engines off when they're photographing wildlife think about how many vibrations or how much vibration is coming from your 2.43 liter diesel engine that's sitting just in front of you it is going to ruin a lot of your shots when you've got a camera mounted on a tripod like this there's a lot you can do with it to actually increase the stability uh even further so one of the things you can do is place your hand your non-shooting hand on top of the lens like this and this and just rest it there and that will help to dampen any shake in the camera and also any mirror slap that you might be experiencing on dslr cameras that really helps if you don't want to do that maybe if you're using a gimbal head just damping down this is a fluid head so it's actually already damped but just damping down that movement by holding the base of the gimbal can also stop the camera moving like this in this direction and then we can also just lock down if we've got a static subject just lock all of these knobs down so the thing actually isn't going to move especially this rotational knob which is something that i don't like to do a lot because i i quite often rotate my camera but getting into the habit of actually locking it down properly will really stabilize your lens quite a lot and then we need to think about how we use the camera when we're actually photographing as well you see a lot of people going like this or moving quite a lot of their index finger quite excessively when they take a shot that also encourages a rotational or torsional response in the camera it shifts like this as you as you take it you might not be aware of it but it is doing it and a lot of modern image stabilization systems can deal with that some of the older ones don't have stabilization in this axis so instead of going like this with your shutter button roll your finger gently across it like this and perhaps hold your breath at the same time really really carefully roll your finger across it and squeeze off the shot of that it's usually a very distant subject the next thing we can do in that vein with these these cameras is actually engage mirror lockup mode that's another setting that you should have on your custom menu so if you engage mirror lock-up mode and you then start to use live view as a focus mechanism it typically is more accurate than using the optical finder generally so using light live view will give you a more accurate focus on the subject and then that lock up will stop any mirror slap that might be causing problems on your camera because the mirror will be locked in place and you can also set a two second timer or use a remote release and then just take your hands off this thing entirely and let it shoot the shot that will often give you a much more stable image but beware because a lot of the time there's a little breeze or wind and it'll actually affect the image your camera will move and if you're in a vehicle like i am most of the time just your movements or your passengers movements will move the camera so it might actually be worth holding it instead you're going to have to make that decision based on your particular situation at that time i don't think it's ever true that we can ignore the environmental impacts of photography when we're trying to get sharp images because quite often they really do play a big part and it's something that most people who are perhaps upgrading to a longer lens like this i don't realize they think they need more reach because they're not getting sharp shots with the lens or equipment that they've got and then when they get that reach they're puzzled because it's actually not improving the shots that they're taking and it's just a case of managing expectations because the animal or bird might be larger in the frame with a lens like this because it's longer focal length but it doesn't necessarily mean that the atmospheric effects between the lens element and the bird have changed nothing has changed in fact and in hot environments like africa that can be a real problem any kind of haze or heating of the ground will shimmer in front especially of open areas between yourself and your subject there'll be a shimmer and you can't do anything about it there's nothing you can do there's no equipment you can buy that no amount of focal length is going to stop that problem it's just going to be there and the only way to deal with it is to either stop photographing it and accept that you're not going to get a good shot of it because the animal is too far away or move much closer so that you don't get that shimmering effect anymore there's much less atmosphere between yourself and the subject and that's also true in foggy conditions and in foggy conditions and misty conditions where you might use a flash that flash will be diffused by the droplets of moisture in the air so be aware of your environment and just manage your expectations in terms of what you might actually be able to get as a shot that's something that we all have to learn about our equipment as we grow into it i think it's an important point it just stops you getting disappointed when you upgrade to a lens like this and you're confronted by exactly the same problems that you always had and nothing really has changed it's not that you're using the equipment wrong it's that your expectations of that equipment are just a little bit too high i briefly mentioned using a flash so a flash is a really good tool for many kinds of photography but especially in drawing out micro contrast and extreme detail in things like bird feathers and it's useful because it just changes the angle of the light particularly in the shadow areas to just throw some light in relief across those feathers and then just generate a little bit of a shadow area behind them in a different plane to the sunlight so using fill flash on your subjects can really improve uh your photography in in most conditions but especially so in harsher brighter conditions when we're shooting later into the day or in the earlier parts of the afternoon you may try to use full flash to just help those shadows out a bit that can really make a big difference to your photography where you have to shoot in those conditions and i don't think it's fair to to just say shoot in the golden hours that's a stupid thing to say and the reason it's a stupid thing to say is because for behavioral photographers like myself those behaviors don't always happen in the golden hours sometimes the golden hours are beautiful to look at but nothing's going on what's the point of taking a photograph of nothing happening so where we've got eagles flying in at around one in the afternoon to three in the afternoon in the harshest of lights in in desert conditions you need to be there at one and three in the afternoon not in the evening because the eagles have gone if you want to photograph that event you need to be there and you need to deal with the conditions that you've got at that time and sometimes those conditions are harsh light and in this instance where you're close enough the fill flash might help you out the next thing i can advise you to do where you're trying to get a sharp image is to consider iso and noise quite often where we're photographing things like birds where there's shadows under the wings or shadows under the body that can be difficult to deal with and you'll sharpen up the image perhaps in pro post and you'll see a lot of noise in those areas there just won't be the dynamic range to pull them up enough so that's where the fill flash helped naturally putting light onto those areas but another way you can do it is to just manage your iso as tightly as possible but also sometimes it's actually worth shooting at a higher iso and just pulling that whole image exposure over to the right side of the histogram and just brightening up the underwing areas of those birds as a result it means you don't have to push the dynamic range of your camera as much be very careful not to blow any highlights take a couple of shots sample shots before you do this but then shifting that exposure to the right of the histogram just gives you so much more latitude when you're post-processing an image to actually get the best out of it one thing that a lot of photographers don't know about is when you pick up a new lens or a new camera and you bolt them together they might not actually be working in perfect harmony and it's quite a common thing despite very tight manufacturing tolerances and for that reason camera manufacturers have built in the ability in dslr cameras cameras with mirrors to adjust the focus mechanism very very slightly to deal with that problem in canon lingo it's called micro focus adjust in mfa and i'll link out to another video on how to do that at a later date when i've got that video done but it's really important to know that that feature is in your camera and it's something that you should do regularly so you should do it before you go on a long trip you should do it every six months or so if your camera has been sitting you should do it after the camera has been serviced because some of the components might have moved and the way you know that you need to adjust the camera is perhaps you're taking a picture and you know that you place that focus point on the eye of the bird or the animal but you notice that it's always seems to be a little bit behind the focus the sharpest plane of focus is a little bit behind or a little bit in front that's back focusing and front focusing and then you know that you need to adjust the micro focus adjust on your camera and it's an important thing to know about just in case you don't seem to be able to win with your focusing tip number 12 in this jigsaw puzzle of sharpness is to realize something fundamental about the properties of sharpness and that's that they cannot be measured we don't measure sharpness we perceive sharpness why is that important well it's really important but why it's because we can manipulate what the person or the viewer sees by post processing the image effectively there's no point in applying blanket sharpening to an image if we want to affect the perception of sharpness instead what we need to do is sharpen some areas and unsharpen if that's the word other areas and this sharpening style of dodging and burning a picture can really help to improve the overall result before i jump into tip number 13 which i actually think is the most important part and the most important take home from this entire video i really would like you to do me a favor if you like the video please hit the like button it really helps the channel grow and get out there and it's a very small channel if you didn't like it i'd also like you to hit that dislike button but do me one more favor please comment about why you didn't like it i won't be offended it'll just help me make better videos for you if we look at a photograph and i've got a photograph that i'm very fond of which i'm going to use in this example here it's a photograph of an elephant in the kruger national park and believe it or not it's shot on film it's medium format film which has its own challenges it's shot with a studio camera so a massive heavy camera called the mamiya rz67 pro 2 and it was shot with 180 millimeter lens which is equivalent to 90 millimeters in 35 millimeter format and when you look through this camera the image appears back to front and it's manual focus so there were a lot of challenges in taking this picture not to mention that it was 40 degrees in the shade at the same time this image of this elephant is one of my favorites and it's a favorite of mine because i took it with this camera it's a favorite of mine because i developed the film myself and it's a favorite of mine because i scanned the film myself and at each level of that photograph from capture there was a difficulty developing there was a difficulty it was the first role of six seven that i'd ever developed and when i scanned it there was also a difficulty and overcoming each of those difficulties to come up with the final result was for me a great achievement i felt very happy with that result and i think if you look at that photograph you know speaking from my own perspective certainly when i look at that photograph the first thing i think about is not whether it's sharp or not it never crosses my mind it just doesn't surface i like the image you know because i have that personal connection with it but i think other people might like the image as well because of the sense of devastation that's portrayed in it and they probably don't think about sharpness either and the important takeaway from that is that sharpness is a perception and it's only relevant when it's not acceptably sharp where an image is not acceptably sharp and for the most case when we treat an image with respect and we process it nicely we will get an acceptably sharp result when we look at that image and i think that's a really important thing to consider because a lot of us come from technical backgrounds we might be doctors originally we might be accountants engineers we might be some kind of gadget nerd because we enjoy digital photography and when we come at an art from that perspective it's very easy to get sucked into this vortex where we think that everything has an answer and everything has a technical answer where in fact with photography a lot of that answer is in how we are and what we feel and when we look at a photograph at least 50 percent of it probably more is us when we look at it we are seeing what we feel not what the photographer took he just gave us or she just gave us that foundation and then we applied all the feeling all the emotion we dragged it up out of our past and applied it to that image and that is such an important factor in how we take our photography forwards it cannot and it never should be always about technical pursuits they're merely the starting place for great photography and ori cartier-bresson famously said but sharpness is a bourgeois concept and this is what he meant bourgeois in this context means wealth without taste or affluent affluence without taste it's an attempt to use something like a very long lens or a very expensive camera simply for the purpose of achieving a technical result without understanding that taste plays a part feeling plays a part emotion plays a part in whether that result is actually valid and i think if you've got to the end of this video and hearing this sermon at this point that's the takeaway sharpness is not everything

Channel: Will Goodlet

Views: 199,621

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Keywords: taking sharp bird photos, sharp bird photos, getting sharp bird photos, how to get tack sharp bird photos, how to take sharp bird photos, bird photography, bird photography secrets, bird photography tips, bird photography tips and tricks, bird photography tutorial, sharp photos, getting tack sharp photos, how to get razor sharp photos, how to get tack sharp photos, how to take sharp photos of birds, how to take sharp photos of birds in flight, wildlife photography

Id: exk-9pbj2Rk

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020