How to Photograph Flying Birds: shutter speed; aperture; focus mode; exposure; and lighting Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrop in for chapter 8 in
my book I'd like to talk about how to
photograph flying birds now I always
encourage people to post pictures on my
Facebook page that's the north or
photography page and recently two of my
readers Kelly and Tara put up pictures
of flying birds and they turned out
great so I'd like to talk a little bit
about how they got that done and how you
can do it too
now the first thing you need to do is to
pick a good position I like to find a
place on a hill so that you're more at
level with the birds the victors will
turn out better than if you're pointed
up at the birds um
second find a position with the Sun at
your back this means that the birds
themselves will be frontlet and that
looks much more attractive than if the
lighting is coming from behind them
it'll also make the exposure easier also
try to find a place where the birds are
flying perpendicular to your lens so
they're flying from side to side that's
much easier to track it's easier on your
camera's autofocus system then if the
birds are flying directly towards you
and you wouldn't want pictures of the
birds flying away from you because
remember you always need that eye in the
picture you'll want to use continuous
autofocus at all times
now I generally select all autofocus
points and for most cameras that gives
you the best chance of getting pictures
in focus now let's talk about equipment
you want to get as close to the birds as
possible which means you're gonna need
the biggest lens that you have now this
is a 500 millimeter f/4 and you
certainly don't need a lens this big the
average 300 millimeter telephoto can do
great and even a 200 millimeter
telephoto lens works really well but the
bigger it is the better your pictures
are going to turn out now if your lens
supports image stabilization you're
usually going to want to turn that off
if you're absolutely sure that it
supports image stabilization designed
specifically for panning you can leave
it on but the image stabilization
probably won't help you anyway because
your shutter speeds are gonna be fast
enough that it wouldn't make a
difference with a big telephoto lens
your arm is bound to get tired while you
hold it up so you might want to use a
monopod if you have it or you can use a
heavy tripod with a what they call a
gimbal head which is useful for panning
and tilting with big telephoto lenses
but it's not at all required
I usually just shoot handheld and that
actually gives you the most
flexibility with where you move now
let's talk about camera settings shutter
speed is really important because the
birds are moving and if use anything
less than about one five hundredth of a
second you're definitely going to get
some motion blur in the picture I
usually recommend starting at one one
thousandth of a second so set your
camera to shutter priority this keeps
your camera at that particular shutter
speed adjusting the aperture as need be
you can also set the ISO to automatic if
possible if your camera doesn't support
automatic ESO then go ahead and set it
to ISO 400 because the bird is moving
you're gonna want to use continuous
autofocus I like to use all focus points
and that gives the camera the best
chance of keeping the bird in focus it's
pretty impossible to keep one particular
focus point over a moving bird
especially when you're looking through a
telephoto lens we're almost ready to
shoot there's just one more thing to
check and that's your metering I want
you to choose spot metering now spot
metering chooses a very small portion of
the picture to determine the overall
exposure and hopefully that'll be the
bird and it will expose the bird
properly even if it needs to overexpose
the sky it'll look better if the sky is
nice and blue but if we do have a bright
sky it's better that the bird is exposed
properly so with those camera settings
let's take a few dozen maybe hundred
shots and we'll see if we can get
something to turn out as you're shooting
take a break every few shots and check
your exposure if you feel like the bird
isn't properly exposed then use your
exposure compensation to increase or
decrease the exposure if the bird is too
dark of course you want to increase the
exposure by one or two stops also check
your focusing if you're finding that
your camera isn't focusing very well
there might not be anything to do about
it except to take more and more pictures
however you can also try setting your
focus points so that you only use the
center focus point rather than using all
focusing points it might work better for
you it kind of depends on the camera and
lens this was for chapter 8 of my book a
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