Focus On Birds In Flight (1 Viewer)

How do I improve the chances of focusing on birds in flight? Often as soon as the bird drops below the horizon, the camera immediately picks up on whatever is in the distance - wood, hills etc.

Back against the sky the auto focus finds the bird.

I seem to have more success if I lower the zoom - say 200 on my 150-500, but then I have to do a heavy crop.

Thanks.

Presumably you have selected the centre point for AF? It might be a question of distance - if you're not close to the bird, the background could be a larger target, proportionally, in the AF zone, or the bird may be straying from the centre if your panning slips a little.

I use a canon 40D with a 400mm lens and in this situation I will always only use 1 out of the 9 focus points changing it on the fly to how i want to frame the image, if the bird drops along a tree line then i stay with it by manual focusing, taking shots with the (normal) shutter button wont effect my manual focusing as auto focus is with "back button focus" 2 separate buttons.

hope that makes a little sense

Gary

Lawts said:

How do I improve the chances of focusing on birds in flight? Often as soon as the bird drops below the horizon, the camera immediately picks up on whatever is in the distance - wood, hills etc.

Back against the sky the auto focus finds the bird.

I seem to have more success if I lower the zoom - say 200 on my 150-500, but then I have to do a heavy crop.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

What Camera are you using Steve? If you have the 7D or a 1 series then it is fairly easy to solve your problem by using a slow tracking sensitivity speed.

Might also depend a bit on how you're panning with the bird. If the bird is moving through your frame, and you are just dipping down to the horizon with the bird, the relative lack of movement in the frame is going to likely cause the background detail to take over the focusing job, especially if the bird is a small part of the frame. However, I find if you are panning with a bird fairly quickly with a long focal length, I can leave all focus points active with continuous focus mode - as you pan with the bird, the background is rendered mostly blur and the camera can't pick up details, whereas the bird if being well panned stays relatively still in relation to the frame, keeping the focus on him.

Cameras will vary as well - some AF systems have more advanced subject tracking capabilities, and some lenses will be faster in focusing along with a closing subject. But even with a basic entry level camera and average focus system, it should still be possible to keep focus on a moving bird by panning quickly with it (obviously if he's coming head-on at you, then he's not varying position enough to the background, and multiple focus points will struggle - in those scenarios, switching to a single focus point or smaller group of central points would be better).

Thanks all. It's a 60D with a Sigma 150-500.

Steve

I am a noob at this so don't shout unless I say something uber dumn !

Is the bird that large in the frame that almost no warning is seem of approaching trees or horizon ?
I am stuck with only 200mm reach for now , so not experienced with tele FLs .

When I shoot cricket , I do so with both eyes open , "natural" to track bowler and ball , "camera" to frame shot .
Is a bit mind boggling at first !
Is this viable for BIF at a longer focal lengths for the OP problem ?

I don't know Froggy. All I do know is recently I was at Bempton trying to take birds in flight, and generally I have some lovely clear shots of the sea below, with this annoying white blur spoiling the shot:C

I don't think I've altered my settings to a single auto-focus point yet, so will try that, but the challenge as I'm panning is the birds are so fast that the aoto-focus doesn't have time to kick-in on the bird before it's moved out of frame.

Every now and then something has worked right and I get a sharp one, but the ratio isn't successful enough - "Torresesque" in terms of hit rate.

What length on a 150-500 would be best - I know it depends on how far away the bird is but generally speaking - 250?

Also what f rating - my lowest?

I just need to start doing something to improve the percentages.


Edit - the irony is when I'm shooting birds at rest you can guarantee the auto-focus finds that one blade of grass in fromt of the bird and focuses on that - why can't it do that in flight.

Have a look at the "Bump focus" technique described here....

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/1949-Bumping-the-focus-for-BIF

Froggy said:

I am a noob at this so don't shout unless I say something uber dumn !

Is the bird that large in the frame that almost no warning is seem of approaching trees or horizon ?
I am stuck with only 200mm reach for now , so not experienced with tele FLs .

When I shoot cricket , I do so with both eyes open , "natural" to track bowler and ball , "camera" to frame shot .
Is a bit mind boggling at first !
Is this viable for BIF at a longer focal lengths for the OP problem ?

Click to expand...

I am not going to shout but you can do that because presumably you are using the camera correctly with the eyepiece against your right eye and can see the cricket with the left. For those of us that didn't know that is how cameras worked and for years have incorrectly used the left eye (in my case because it is the stronger eye) it seems almost impossible to make the change.