We're at rocky neck State Park on a very cold morning to talk about how to photograph flying birds
Chelsea tell them about shutter speed the first thing you want to think about is your shutter speed you can start at about 1
Mm, and I like to either have my settings on shutter priority
so I can quickly switch shutter speeds or
Manual mode with auto ISO for the same reason because I know we're talking about shooting flying birds
But sometimes they perch and that can make a good shot too, so you'll start at 1 mm of a second
And that's usually good for any smooth flying bird not doing too much crazy movement once you get into a bird
That's smaller and diving like a Kingfisher
You might want to bump it up
You might also find that if you have a really high resolution camera it
Introduces more camera shake or motion blur so you might have to bump up the shutter speed for that too
But a little bit of trial and error goes a long way
Zoom in 1 to 1 to see if there's any kind of shake or blur and then if there is just up your shutter speed
a bit
a
Good feature to know how to use is exposure compensation you always want your subject to be the thing that is exposed
Properly, so if you have a very bright white bird
Let's say an Egret you want to put your exposure compensation
Down so that you're not blowing out the highlights and the feathers if your shootings
Said that the animal is backlit or the sky is very bright
You can also put your exposure compensation up so that your camera isn't exposing for the bright background instead of your subject you can
Experiment by taking pictures first and then exposing it up and down and see what works for you
You might want to take a moment while you're shooting to check your histogram make sure you're not clipping any highlights on your subject
Don't you decide to poop I
Find that the lighting on your subject can make or break your picture
I typically try to shoot with my back to the Sun so that my subject is lit up
But that doesn't always work out birds typically take off into the wind
And the Sun can be in a different direction
So you can't always have it perfect another thing is overcast days can kind of make your subject look soft
But I tend to just go out and shoot anyway. You never know what you're gonna get if you can choose perfect conditions
I love the golden hour, and I like to have to bat my back to the Sun
Right now. There's some really beautiful soft light on this Hawk, and he's looking right into it
And so we're getting some really nice pictures where his eyes are nice lately
when I shoot I tend to shoot raw plus JPEG and when I say that I mean I shoot raw to my faster card and
JPEG to my slower card raw is easier to bring out the details when you're editing and post
JPEG is a little more cemented, but there's still
You still have some ability to edit your picture or bring up the shadows bring down the highlights just not as drastically
I don't tend to have buffering camp problems with my camera
but I might run into that issue if
I'm getting really fast action like a bird diving for a fish if that's a problem for you
If you feel like you're missing shots because you're filling your buffer
Then you might want to consider switching to JPEG that will allow you to get more shots before your buffer is full
But like I said you might not be able to recover those shadows or highlights as easily
So you kind of have to decide for yourself?
Which works best for you?
Are you missing that crucial shot because your buffer is filling you can consider JPEG if it's just fine like me
shoot raw or raw plus JPEG
For my eye, so I'm pretty much always in auto ISO
And I know you're gonna get a lot of people saying they like to meter the scene once and then just use manual ISO
But I just haven't found that that works for me. I find that especially with flying birds
They might fly from full Sun into the shade and then your exposure will change drastically
And I know maybe you're super smart and super fast and you can do that while the bird is flying but for me
I'd rather let the camera do it because it can do it multiple times per second other things cannot change your
overall exposure that require me to use auto ISO like the Sun moving behind the cloud can change the
exposure by two four stops even on an overcast day where the lighting seems even
The Sun will move from patches of really thick clouds to thin clouds
And you might see the exposure changed by a full stop even on a clear day over the course of 15 minutes
The sun's usual path will change the exposure by maybe a third of a stop so for me
I've used an auto exposure all the time
Focusing is super important
All your settings don't matter at all if the bird is out of focus
so of course for a flying burger and continuous focusing mode for a bird that's flying against a
Cluttered background like they're flying against the background of the trees or the water
I use a single autofocus point and I do my very best to keep it on the bird
Now on the Nikon d5 and the nikon d 500 I find the 3d tracking
Works well enough that i'll use it to
attract the bird isn't moves across the frame on the da 50 and pretty much every other camera in the world I end up just
using a single
fixed
Autofocus point it is really hard to keep that focusing point on a bird with a big telephoto lens though especially when it's handheld it
Just takes practice now if the bird is against a clear sky
That's great news because I can just use all the autofocus points and that way as the Verdon meanders through the frame the camera is
Gonna track it and keep it in focus
I am a back button focused person we have a video on that if you aren't familiar
now some of the latest cameras like the Canon five years are the Canon 5d Mark for the D 500 D 5 D 850 and
the Sony 89 and the Sony a7r 3 they
Allow you to buttons that you can use for back button focus and I program one of them to do a single
Autofocus point and the other one to do all auto focus points that way if I'm tracking a flying bird
And it goes from a crowded background
Or I want the single autofocus point I'll hit the AF on button that does
Single autofocus point if it moves into the clear sky
I can make my life easier by hitting the other autofocus button and tracking all the autofocus points check our
Tutorials for detailed information on how to configure back button focus for your camera if this video helped you out you can subscribe down below
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You can also learn more about wildlife photography by checking out our book stunning digital photography specifically chapter 8
It's $9.99 for the e-book, and it comes with 14 hours of video. Thanks so much
Unbelievable
Tony
Tony I
Heard that the D 850 has 4k video. Did you read about that?
Would you recommend people buy that one
Tony do your puns make you think I'm low real birch
Son of a birch
Are you leaving me because of the pun are you leaving because of the puns bye