Bird Photography Setup

[JTF]

I have been shooting with a Nikon D50 and a Nikkor 80-400 AF VR ED 1:4.5-5.6D handheld. I almost always shoot on P mode with AF-C and occassionaly adjust the exposure. Most of my pics come out quite good but when shooting raptor flight shots agains a blue sky I normally get some digital noise. Is this to be expected with my current setup? Would a D90 with same lense handle the noise any better? Thanks for any tips or info.

[RJM]

Overall sensor improvement between a D50 and D90 is a little over one full stop. With other design and firmware improvements such as automatic CA and distortion suppression, a D90 is probably a worthy upgrade. But the viewfinder and AF system on an older D300 would be far superior for catching flight shots so might be worth investigating now since prices have dropped to near D90 levels with the release of the newer D300s.

cheers,
Rick

[Gentoo]

Overall sensor improvement between a D50 and D90 is a little over one full stop. With other design and firmware improvements such as automatic CA and distortion suppression, a D90 is probably a worthy upgrade. But the viewfinder and AF system on an older D300 would be far superior for catching flight shots so might be worth investigating now since prices have dropped to near D90 levels with the release of the newer D300s.

cheers,
RickIf you can find a D300. It's discontinued and not available in many areas. They stopped production of it when the D300s was released.

[gandytron]

I moved from the D50 to the D90 in June and have been very happy with the results I've had so far. The D300 would have been nice because the AF system is supposed to be better than the D90, but I guess that AF system will be passed down to the next iteration of the D90, whenever that comes along. I didn't get the D300 because of the price and additional weight.

AF on the D90 seems better than the D50 (i'm using a nikon 300mm f4 AF-S lens and 1.4 TC), not sure if you would see any improvement on the 80-400 (which doesn't have it's own AF motor).

Best wishes

Dave

[666taz]

It sounds to me that because you are shooting in p mode the camera is exposing for the sky not the bird so you have to alter the exposure,which will ramp up the noise.This would be the same on any camera.You need to set your camera to spot metering if its got it, if not partial metering this will concentrate more on metering the bird rather than the sky also if your camera has exposure compensation set it to about +1stop this will overexpose the sky but will expose the bird correctly and shouild reduce the noise, if its too much then ajust accordingly in steps up or down practice will tell you how much to use stop wise.Try this as its better than spending money as if you alter the exposure after shooting on any camera you are likley to up the noise level so a new camera would probbley do the same .Hope this helps Phill.

[seaspirit]

No question that a D90 or D300 will beat a D50 in image quality.
However, I agree with Phill that shooting in P-mode could be the bottle neck here, and would likely be that same with a more recent camera model.
P-mode is the worst option to make photos, in particular in situations with diversae light conditions. I started out using aperture priority and more recently I use primarily full manual exposure control. It just works better when shooting a bird against a very bright or very dark background.
An upgrade fropm the D50 is interesting for another reason. Essential controls (AF mode, Metering mode, ISO) are directly accessible by designated buttons in the D90 D300 as opposed to the D50 were one needs to scroll through the menue ......

Ulli

[JTF]

Great input from all, very much appreciated. The D300 is still available here for $1,500 canadian & the D90 for $1,069. In the meantime I will try out some flight shots with the tips you have given for sure.