Bird Settings

There are a couple of ways of setting up your camera to shoot birds in flight.

This morning (Feb. 6/25) it was rainy and breezy and for whatever reason our Canada Geese were almost continuously flying overhead. We had about a dozen photographers from the Oakville Camera Club.

So how do you set up your camera?

Start with either Manual or Shutter Priority mode.

In Manual you’ll set the shutter speed to 1/2500th of a second and the aperture of your telephoto lens wide open. Leave your ISO on automatic and it will create a near perfect exposure every time.

Or shoot in Shutter Priority mode (this is what I do) and set your shutter speed to 1/2500th of a second. Under normal conditions it’s likely your aperture is going to run wide open and your ISO again should be set on auto.

The big difference here is the mode allows for the camera to make some of its own adjustments to exposure on its own. But I second guess my settings and to allow for a slightly brighter result I add a third to half a stop more light to compensate for shooting into the bright skylight background.

Really it doesn’t matter much which mode you’re in and best to fire off a couple of test shots and check your image recall screen to ensure all is ok.

So why 1/2500th of a second? This will stop camera shake from hand holding a long lens on your camera and is fast enough to stop the action of most birds. A higher shutter speed would be great for stopping the action of a hummingbird (and often an expert photographer will use a flash to stop action) but isn’t needed for regular bird shots.

A wide open aperture is not ideal as most lenses hit their sweet spot around f/5.6 – f/8 but that’s not going to let in enough light and if used will force the ISO to rise way too high. So wide open it is.

Finally auto ISO will be the determining factor when it comes to exposure. While shooting birds on darkish days it’s going to rise to the point that you’re going to be able to see noise in your images (looks like grain on film) and that can be objectionable.

To fix noise issues specialized software available from Topaz and DXO are highly recommended.

Finally to get better come out and shoot birds. Getting patterns of birds in flight is hard. It takes time and practice.