It's a wonderful day in Mpumalanga in South Africa
The grasslands of South Africa.
and today I'm off to Zibulo Colliery,
which might sound like a strange place
to visit for photography
but actually
it's a wonderful location for
photographing birds at water level.
So I'm pretty excited about today
despite the fact that
I got up at 3am in the morning
and
I've got about 60km to go
So I just wanted to check in with you guys
tell you what I'm up to
and, er head on over there.
[INTRO MUSIC]
[SOFT MUSIC]
[FOOTSTEPS ON BOARDWALK]
One of my absolute favourite things to do
is to take pictures of birds at water level.
Now. It's not easy to do in South Africa because
a lot of the time, the water
that we do have is in National Parks
ah and we can't get out and get into it.
Otherwise, the water we have
can be disease ridden, so waterborne disease
like Bilharzia
are quite dangerous
Or there are dangerous animals.
Snakes, hippos, crocodile even. In the water.
But one exception to that
is the grassland ponds
around Zibulo colliery in Mpumalanga.
And I'm sitting at my favourite water level hide
today and it's a dugout
cement hide
sitting in this pristine pond that has been
rehabilitated by the colliery.
as, er, a place for photographers to come.
It's free, you can just turn up
and you can sit here all day and take beautiful photographs
just with your lens a few inches
off the water.
I hate when you do a long piece to camera
and forget to hit the record button!
That's what I've just done. Very irritating.
While I'm sitting here waiting for some subjects to turn up.
I thought I'd share some of my settings
that I use for taking pictures of birds in flight.
Now, I have a white-throated swallow
which is a white and sort of iridescent blue bird
that's coming in occasionally and landing
on a perch about 10 metres away form me.
And I want to capture this bird in flight.
Either against the grassy bank, the water of the sky.
Now this presents a problem for
any automatic mode;
so. aperture priority, shutter priority
or auto iso.
I like to shoot in these conditions in manual mode.
and what that allows me to do is to expose for the bird
rather than to allow the camera to choose the exposure
based on the background it sees because
it won't see that tiny bird and expose for it.
Even with spot focus, even if you can keep your spot on it
on the bird while it is flying erratically.
So in order to use manual
what we need to do is consider the exposure
but also the conditions we need to capture
that bird in flight. In order to capture it in flight. It's moving fast.
We need as fast shuter speed
A relatively deep depth of field
because the bird will move front to back in the frame as it
moves through the shot.
And we therefore need to
ramp our ISO a little bit, in order to achieve those settings.
Er, our aperture as well, we
to use a slightly narrower aperture
the narrower the better in these conditions cos the background is quite far away.
in order to catch that bird in flight because
when we narrow that aperture, what it does is it increases
our depth of field and allows for some error
when we focus on the bird.
The other thing I'm going to do and I'm going to use this zoom lens
to do it. Is dial back
the focal length a little bit, so I'm not
going to use the extreme focal length which will make the bird big
in the frame. 1 because that bird will be difficult to track
if it's big in the frame but 2 and more importantly
That dialling back of the focal length
will actually also increase the depth of field
available to us
So, I'm going to focus on this perch
With the bird on it. With these settings dialled in
In manual mode which allows me to expose
for the bird and not the background
and I'm going to keep that bird in the corner of the frame
and he's going to take off
into the wind from left to right the winds blowing
this way across the scene and I should be able to get a few frames
of him before he disappears out of the frame
and I'm unable to follow him. So
bearing all that in mind
I just want to mention how
I choose the exposure for these shots. I generally
don't use the bird. I know the bird is slightly darker than
middle grey. Now I have a grass
bank over there. Grass is basically middle grey.
So if I focus my camera on that bank
and take the exposure of that bank
It's going to give me the settings that I talked about.
1/2000th of a second, ISO 1000
and f9. Now you'll obviously
have different conditions when you do this but use that
grass bank for middle grey. Now my bird is slightly darker
So I'm going to dial in 2/3 stop over exposure
and what that's gonna do is
allow my exposure in manual mode to stay steady
through all of my shots
and it won't change the exposure based on my background.
Which is very important for this kind of photography.
Right, it's very quiet here
I think, what I'm gonna do is go and visit some of the other hides at Zibulo
and show you what they're about
One of the great things about this place is that there is more than one location
[COW MOO's] Well there you have it.
Well guys I think it's time for me to head home. The clouds have come in.
The birds have gone to sleep and it's a long drive.
[STRING GUITAR MUSIC]