PMW603

Great questions ... for starters try this recommended by Eduardo del Solar who teaches Bird Photography at Mass Audubon: with equipment ready go out early in AM or late afternoon, practice taking BIF using Gulls or other birds that congregate in your area such as ducks at water treatment areas and practice! From my experience, try setting up your camera as others have suggested, sports mode or manual with shutter speed at 1/2000-1/2500, f/8 and auto ISO (100-6400 range that can be set in menu on Canon 7D M2), use as long a lens you can afford and steadily hand hold. Have fun!

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I prepare by eating breakfast, taking a shower, drying, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, shaving, drying my hair, and putting my equipment in the car.
I do BIF at the beaches, the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge (both locations), Ramona Grasslands, San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and SeaWorld.
I get to the location whenever I get there. Sometimes, I'm delayed by traffic. I walk around and when I see something, I take a picture.
100% handheld.
I think seaside and riverside are more complicated and encumbered than the wooded scenes because there are so many more people at seaside and riverside. People are the complication.
Most successful setting is burst mode and P mode. Our cameras are more powerful than the computers that put man on the moon back in the '60s so I let them do their thing.
Equipment for BIF is a Canon 760D and Tamron 150-600 G2. I also have with me at all times a Tamron 90mm macro (for cool flowers and insects) and a Tamron 18-300 for landscapes and tall buildings and trees.
I drive to the location entrance and then walk the rest of the way. I have done 30 miles walking in one day at the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge and 15 miles in one day at the Ramona Grasslands where we have a pair of bald eagles nesting.
My "Dancing Bird" picture below is from the Ramona Grasslands on April 8. Birdies were in the middle of the lake. I have always wanted to catch BIF's landing and did this with my Tamron 150-600 G2 at 600 mm.
The second picture, "Hungry Bird," is from September 19 2017, San Diego riverside, right after I got my new Tamron 150-600 G2.

pahtspix

That should read "STEVE PERRY" (not "parry")..He'll be much easier to find now! (HA!)..BTW Steve is and INCREDIBLE teacher, and I also HIGHLY recommend his e-books!!

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

Yes sir, BBF CAF easy to switch to spot Focus.

Jim70 Loc: Delaware

Thanks for these links. I'm just getting into BIF (and other wildlife) and I'll be haunting those topics in the coming days.

Feiertag Loc: British Columbia, Canada

The more you do it the better you will get. You can read all the advise under the sun about this subject to no avail.

Look at the shots that worked out to be keepers and remember to repeat the same good practice, on the next trip out. What is equally important, is to look at the ones that failed and the next time, avoid making the same mistakes.

Good luck!

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

patmalone51 Loc: Washington, DC., Montgomery County, MD

I've only been doing birds in flight seriously for a few months but feel like I'm getting better with practice. Here's what I've been learning:

Locations: It helps to find a really magical place like Corkscrew Swamp in Florida, where every time you turn around you're faced with another great shot (here is my album from visiting there a week ago on a quick trip: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmhamcQW ), but there are plenty of national wildlife refuges (many of them almost totally unknown and under visited even for nearby residents), Audubon sanctuaries, rivers, lakes, etc., all over our wonderful country. I shoot mostly in the DC area where I live and have discovered a number of spots that local birders know about but not so much the rest of us. Example: Dyke Marsh south of Alexandria Va: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8xP3wY . There are state-specific birder listservs you can join to get tips.

Types of birds: They're all great, but to get them in flight, bigger birds like raptors and wading birds are a heck of a lot easier than sparrows and other small songbirds. You can get a songbird in flight at takeoff or landing without too much trouble but otherwise, they're just too fast, at least for me. Not that you shouldn't try: I got some meadowlarks in flight at a wildlife refuge in NM which you can see here (along with a bunch of raptors in flight): https://flic.kr/s/aHskue6amp . That was mostly luck. They say that luck favors the prepared, and that's true, but I don't do anything too elaborate. The main thing is to get to the site and keep the camera on and ready to shoot at all times. Try to keep the sun behind you and the birds facing you, but that's easier said than done. I don't have the patience to sit in one place for long times, but if you have that fisherman mentality, go for it. If you do that, you can set up what amounts to a stage and wait for the birds to do their walk-ons.

Lenses: You need a long lens, minimum 400 to 500. My current fave is the nikon 200-500. I can handhold with that, although it's a tad heavy. You can drop 12 big ones and get a 600mm f4E, but then you have to use a tripod which limits you from quick reactions. You can get a shorter lens like a 300 and use a 1.4 teleconverter to take it up to 420mm, but that really slows down your auto focus and you miss a lot of shots.

Camera body: I have been getting a lot more keepers since getting the new D850 - with faster auto focus and more pixels (so you can crop down if needed) and less noise in low light.

Settings: A lot of trial and error, but what I currently do and is fairly reliable:
* shutter in range of 1/1250 to 1/2500 -- faster speeds get you crisper focus but more noise. You need to go even faster if you want to stop a hummingbird's wings, for example.
* Aperture wide open or up to around f8 max.
* ISO Auto. So shutter and aperture are both on manual and only ISO fluctuates auto. You can experiment with where to set the upper limit of the ISO but on a body like the D850 you can go really high (like in five digits).
* Exposure compensation: This is hard to remember in the heat of the moment. But for darker birds I try to keep it at +0.7 to as high as +2.0 and keep checking the histogram to make sure I'm not too far to the right. For white birds, you need to go in the opposite direction: -1.0 or even more. Check your white clipping on the histogram until you're not getting any blinkies on the bird bodies.
* Auto focus set to D9 or something like that, and back button focus which works great once you get used to it. Steve Perry talks about how to set this up in his Nikon auto focus book.

One more important thing I just remembered: Check your focus on the display from time to time by setting a button to give you one-button 100% zoom on the image. Nikon has this easily with the center button. A lot of times what looks like good focus to the casual eye turns out to be not so crisp when you blow it up.

Persistence is a good thing. Obsession can be good too.

Hope that helps.
Pat Malone

markie1425 Loc: Bryn Mawr, PA

"BIF"

Some insiders post this way-not just "BIF" but other acronyms or shortcuts.

Others who may use UHH to learn have no idea what you're talking about.

Please be courteous and let the rest of us know what your acronyms or shortcuts mean.

MJKilpatrick Loc: Cape May, NJ

Hello Raz Theo,

There is a methodology to use. Bird flight photography is inherently a low success type of photography. Here is some info that might helps you.

1. As to the location: Find a place where your have a continuing and recurring flight of birds. The more recurring and continual the flights are the more you can practice over and over and the more opportunity you have in a shorter amount of time the quicker your skill develops. The one off opportunities can challenge to many folks if they are just starting to learn the techniques so a place where there are a lot of continual flights in a visit increases not only the aspect of continual practice when learning but also a greater probability of capturing the shots you are wanting. Where are good places? There can be many, or just some, depending on where you live. So here are some ideas: During spring and fall migrations, sea birds and ducks are flying up the coasts. On the right day standing on the end of the right jetty can bring continual opportunity. Here in NJ there are two places that are good examples. In October and November during the fall migration, there can be a continual flight of both Gannets and sea duck very near and sometimes over head on the Avalon, NJ jetty. World class sea duck viewing can be had at the Barnegat Inlet Jetty. In both cases the birds pattern out and can be see coming from a long distance. At the Barnegat Inlet Jetty, when the tides run, the ducks float down the edge of the jetty feeding on mussels. When they get to one end or the other, they then fly back and repeat. All you have to do is sit on the edge of the jetty and wait for that process to repeat over and over. Another place where you see flight paths as such are at nesting colonies and rookeries. Depending on the wind (and the boundaries set) you can stand, or sit off the colonies where those flight paths develop and have a continual and repetitive opportunity. In spring, there is no better place to get flight shots of Redknots, Semi-palmated plovers and other shorebirds than what is called the Reeds Beach Jetty. Light is perfect in the morning the birds are flying across in numbers. In all these cases, being there when the light is right is the key. So mornings at Avalon will give you all back light stuff, as you will be facing East. Afternoons, the light is perfect. This is the same with Barnegat. Reeds beach, its the morning, go in the afternoon it is all back lit as it faces to the West. So there are plenty of places where these flight paths develop and if you find a few, and visit at the right time of day, you will hone the bird in flight skill quickly as the opportunities are continual and numerous. St. Mary's in Newfoundland is a spot that is great for this and there are other well known places too. You can also find such places with species like Snow Geese and Brant. Both immediately go to bath and clean themselves up after feeding. Find where they go to do that, or be at a refuge when they are using an accessible spot by one of the drives, and you will have more opportunity than one can image and it brings that practice to hone skills quickly and it increases the odds of success.

2. Light.....follow the light. The brighter and stronger the light the better focus systems work. Keep the light at your back if you can. But remember some really nice bird in flight photos can be silhouettes so if you have a beautifully colored sky you can go in opposite direction.

3. Settings.......high shutter speed is needed so the f/stop is usually not set on the higher range. f/5.6 to f/8 is more than likely the range you will use. Which you choose depends on what you like. Try all through the range and see how they perform, that will tell you where to pre-set or what to jump to when dealing with a one off opportunities. But on recurring and continual opportunities you will have plenty of time to change settings to compare. I suggest doing this as there are plenty of effects that can be produced by different f/stops and especially different shutter speeds. You want the shutter speed to be the minimal speed that freezes the head and body of the bird (it can differ to some degree as different species fly at different speeds) Remember you have varying velocity in the movement in different parts of a flying bird, particularly the wings. The more you raise the shutter speed over than minimum that freezes the head and body, the less wing blur. The range of shutter speeds usually start at 1/800th of a second and a minimum and then up, with the more probable shutter speed that works as a minimum being 1/1000 or 1/1250th as a starting point. You have to recognize that there are aspects of relative velocity at play. So a bird flying left to right across your field of view where you can pan the lens with it , needs a lower minimum shutter speed to capture the bird than one angling to you or straight at you where the bird is changing distance from you quickly (unlike when flying across your field of view) and will need a higher minimum shutter speed. Also remember that the farther the bird is away the less it is changing position in relation to the camera, the nearer it is the quicker it is changing position in relation to the camera though the bird is moving at the same velocity.

3. Autofocus settings. Usually the continual focus is used and the focus points lowered to the least you can. You want the focus system to continually focus on the subject as it is changing its position in flight, especially if it is also changing the distance from you as it is flying. The more focus points you have the more the camera can jump the focus from your subject to something in the background, or from the head area to a tail of wing. The bigger the bird the easier it is to keep the focus point on it. This is both a product of the size of the bird but also the distance away. A large bird far away is relatively small to the camera. A small bird very close is relatively large to the camera. So there is a range of distance that works best, not to far that the subject is tough to hold in focus, but not too close that it is moving so fast you cannot keep up with it. This is what makes getting shots of smaller birds like sparrows in flight challenging, the closer they are the faster they are in relation to the camera and hard to keep on the focus point, but if they are farther away they are just spots in the sky. This is why starting and practicing on larger birds is what you see recommended.


4. I usually just hand hold but will sometimes use a tripod and a ball head to track some that may be a bit farther away or if I know I may have a busy background. If using a tripod, Gimbal heads would be the thing to use. Think about hand holding when photographing a bird in flight is similar to wing shooting techniques (skeet). Look at some shooting competitions on TV, if you can, and watch how the competitors hold and swing. It is from the hips not the arms. Work at finding that posture that works and then always bring the camera up to the eye in that same posture then swing from the hips as you pan. If you have a hood and it has a tightening screw, you can you use it as a sight by placing it at the top of the lens and sight it between the two sides of the flash shoe on top of the camera. When you do this on a bird, versus trying to find it in the view finder, it gets the camera on the bird quick. On my set up, when I do this, the bird is located just below the view finder so all I have to do is quickly raise the lens an inch of two and the bird ends up right in the middle of the frame. It is quicker than searching for the bird once you put the camera up to your eye. Its a simple sighting technique that works well, there are some red dot sighting systems you can attach to the camera too but I do not know much about these and have never used one.

5. Focal length: I use a 500mm f/4 lens and it works well for me. The longer the focal length the greater the working distance and the greater the working distance the less the relative velocity. So I like to use longer focal lengths. That being said, I know many places and species where it is almost impossible to keep that 500 mm on the subject like fall flights of warblers that fly by quickly and reasonable close. They are moving so fast it is tough to use a 500mm and sometimes a 400mm. This happens where I live at a place called Higsbees Beach that has morning song bird flights in the fall. There is a dike that allows standing very high and more level with the path of the birds. Its a small subject, moving in full flight and the flight can be varying......a 300mm is the lens that works really well though no matter how skilled one may be, there are way more failed photos than successful ones. It is inherent. So depending on the situation, sometimes longer focal lengths work better, sometimes they are of great disadvantage. That being said, use what you have and find a place where bird flight is repetitive and continual and you will see things improving simply through a rapid repetition of trial and error.

6. Backgrounds: the more complicated the background the more probability that the focus will jump. Open sky background is the place to start so you get the other skills developed....it takes some development of motor skills to keep that focus point on the bird. Then start working with backgrounds. You definitely do not want to work on situations where there are foreground elements.......or a lot of them. That gets really tough. The farther your subject is spaced away from the background elements the better. If you are having trouble with birds in flight with busy backgrounds know that we all do. And backgrounds can be deceiving. A duck flying across the water does not seem like it is against a busy background but all those ripples and waves on the water provide a texture that can cause the focus to jump.......most water is not still......a still and flat water background is more like an open sky background but water surface is usually not still. The best way to deal with a busy background is to keep the focus point on the bird the best you can.

7. Use continual drive, especially on busy backgrounds. I like to burst through a flying bird. One technique is to get locked on the tail and then slowly pan through to the head. This brings your motor skills in relation to the birds velocity, but I shoot through the entire bird on continual drive and when I hit the head I regulate my movements to stay on the bird all while keeping the finger on the shutter. So you definitely always want to be on continual drive if you have it on your camera.

8. Preparation: I do not do much on preparation per say as it pertains specifically to birds in flight, its the same preparation for all bird photography. I do know where to go for flight shots of different species and that is a matter of study and visiting those sites over and over so I tend to be prepared for where I am going instinctively but when learning I studied sites in relation to what is there and when, how the birds use the habitat, where I can get to, when to be there (when the light is right) and other elements like migration times, movement of birds on the radar screens, etc. One defining factor is the wind direction. Birds tend to move more into the wind than with a tail wind in local movements though in migration they love a tail wind for longer distance flights. The wind will tell me when it is likely migratory birds are moving through the area and it also tells me what those approach flight paths may be on a site. So for me, preparation is much more a thing that links to behavior than my equipment other than being sure I have the equipment I expect to use with me. It is the case, from time to time, when I go grab that tripod out of the trunk of the car that I forgot I took the head of and used two days ago on the tripod I use in the mud and water. Its not fun having the right tripod with you but having the head sitting at home.

I hope this helps. I don't think I numbered my responses to the order you asked. Don't give up, its not an easy thing......and nothing that came quick or easy brings as much a feeling of reward as those things that challenge us more.

With My Best

Jerry Green Loc: Huntsville, AL

This is an excellent guide to Bird Photography:

http://www.digitalbirdphotography.com/

Raz Theo Loc: Music City

SkyKing, thanks for the reminder - I live just 2 miles away.

Raz Theo Loc: Music City

Nice work, nice rig. I appreciate the stats.

Raz Theo Loc: Music City

Your answer is exactly why I asked the question. I agree that patience is probably the most important ingredient for success.

Raz Theo Loc: Music City

Quite a few others had already answered this for you before I got back online - figured you didn't need my redundancy.