tainkc wrote:
O.k.. Everyone here has given you excellent advice. Now to put it to practical use. First thing; I have an almost identical setup with my bird feeder. It is about 4 ft. away from my dining room window and I set about 4-5 ft. inside of that at a table - no tripod. Unless you have really shaky hands, you don't need one. A tripod would be a smart thing to use regardless. I have yet to be accused of being smart. 2nd: you have an excellent camera and an excellent lens. Make sure that the I.S. is turned on as mentioned before. For my exposure, I use the spot metering most of the time. Try that. For focusing, I always use single point. Try that.
Now then, there are a few schools of thought on this. You should either use M mode or AV mode. Stay away from any type of shutter priority for now (TV). Let's go with M (manual) mode for now.
As you can see, I am trying to guide you to a practical start point. Let us now start with the really cool settings. In M mode. Set your ISO to 400 to start with. In your example, I would try to focus towards the back of his neck only because even with a single point focus, it will still read the feeder. The reason I chose ISO 400 for you is two fold: 1: you can use much faster shutter speeds and it allows for overcast light. 2: it helps with camera shake because you can use faster shutter speeds. That simple.
Set the aperture around F5.6 just for a start point. You can always change this later.
Now you are almost set. Look through your viewfinder. dial in the shutter speed to get those small bars as close to 0 as possible (I think that is how your camera works). You should have a good exposure at this point. Snap the picture. If by chance your shutter speed is around 1/100 sec. or so, you can lower the ISO to 200 for less noise and a sharper image. Remember what others have pointed out; your shutter speed should be somewhere around 300 or more with that particular lens when hand holding. If it is around 500 or slightly more, that is not a bad thing either. At this point, you can fool around and change the aperture to F6.3 - F7.1 or higher for a great depth of field. Just try not to have the shutter speed below 300 when doing this. If it does this at F7.1 for example, just bump the ISO back up to 400. Easy, right?
A good way to practice this if there are no birds around, simply stick a golf ball or something with texture about where you think the bird will be. I hope this was of some help.
If you wish to use AV mode instead, simply set your desired Aperture and ISO, and the camera will automatically select the shutter speed for you. Even easier yet, Huh? I hope this helps.
O.k.. Everyone here has given you excellent advic... (
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Thank you so very much for this!!! I have printed it out and am going to try it!! I was shooting through the glass before but was getting an awful glare so I have removed the screens ...even bought a bar stool so that I could move from the front to the back windows and sit high enough to sit and wait for the birds to come lol Since (no) tripod as yet I can sit at least a bit comfy while awaiting the birds...(wearing a jacket ... I also have a cardinal and a few others that sit at the very back of the property up in the pines and also up in the maples but am failing on good shots ...either too light or too dark or not focused .... I wonder if I can show you what I mean buy posting pics here? Another thing to figure out is this new Corel software package that came with my camera as a bonus.... My pics don't always go there lol My computer dosnt recognize the card.... nothing pops up for me to send the pics there.... I may be able to find a closer shot.. have no idea what settings I was on but will be paying attention to that now... WOW!!! Am I too talkative?