Need Help with Basic Bird Photography (1 Viewer)

Hi All,

I have just started out in bird photography. I'm encountering two recurring problems. One is soft focus and the other is the bird is too dark on a cloudy day. My shutter speed is at a minimum 1/125. Aperture is 8 or 11. If I change the aperture to a lower number, the shutter speed goes up; but I prefer to a shallower background, so I keep the aperture at 8. ISO is 800 on a cloudy day. Camera is Canon Digital Rebel, the vintage DSLR. Lens is Tamron 28 to 300mm.

Also, is the autofocus process controlled by the camera or the lens?

I'm attaching two pictures. The first one clearly shows that the focus is way too soft. The second one shows my on-going problem of not having enough light on the bird.

Can anyone suggest ways for me to improve? Thanks in advance for the help.

Granville

From the looks of these two samples your shutter speed was too slow. The problems with both shots is motion blur, of either the subject, or the camera, or both! The second shot is also under exposed.

I see the point of a smaller aperture (for more depth of field) which can compensate for slight focus inaccuracies, but you lose the benefit of stopping down if your shutter speed is too slow to freeze the subject in the first instance. Better to open the aperture as wide as possible on duller days, which I think will be f6.3 on your lens. This allows more light in resulting in faster shutter speeds.

Also, I'm not sure if your lens has an image stabiliser, but if not you might need to consider using a tripod or monopod when light levels are low.

Shooting birds against the light is always difficult, but some compensation can me made in post production on the computer, but first work on making sure the shots are sharp!

The AF motor will likely be in the lens, but will be controlled by the camera's AF system.

Hope this helps.

SteveClifton said:

Also, I'm not sure if your lens has an image stabiliser, but if not you might need to consider using a tripod or monopod when light levels are low.

Click to expand...

Yes, it looks like "moved". Moreover this bird is hidden between branches, so would be better in such situation to switch camera to only one AF point (to avoid focusing on branches instead of the bird) or even to manual focusing and keep it on head of a bird. Because picture is subjectively sharp when eyes of photographed object are sharp.

Maybe using lamp shortening exposure time would improve sharpness.

Regarding second picture - there are at least two ways to improve exposition
1) switch the exposure mode (program) to manual (M), measure light at something bottom, below the sky, like leaves or branches, and later use saved exposition parameters to take picture of bird against the sky. Or
2) switch the light metering mode to partial or better to point metering (if your camera has such possibility). If metering area covers approximately only a bird, exposure should be not bad.

You can use partial or point metering in point#1 too.
Second image is also unsharp and there is something wrong with white ballance - it seems to be pink.

But giving advices is much easier than taking own pictures. People say: The hell is paved with good advices. However this is about different kind of advices.

Looking at your pictures they are not sharp anywhere: that tends to indicate camera shake as opposed to any fault with focus etc. There is an old rule of thumb which says that if you are hand holding your camera your shutter speed should be twice that of the longest focal length of your lens. For example if you use a 50mm lens then your shutter speed should not dip below 100th of a second to ensure sharp pictures. In the case of a 28-300mm lens then ideally you should shoot at 500th of a second or more to avoid shake.

Obviously this can create problems in certain situations as it may well be necessary to increase your ISO setting to a higher than ideal level and put up with the slight loss of quality or spend an arm and a leg on faster lenses.

The alternative would be to use a monopod or tripod, but still keep the shutter speed above say 125th just to be sure.

The focus motor is in the body, but if you are shooting birds in trees then the camera may well be focusing on branches etc as opposed to the bird itself. The best way around this is to switch to manual focus and do it yourself.

If possible always shoot in RAW, this gives larger files which take longer to write to the card, but the upside is it gives you so much more scope for post production work in photoshop. The finished image can always be saved as a high quality JPEG.

Hope this helps.

geordiebeginner said:

Looking at your pictures they are not sharp anywhere: that tends to indicate camera shake as opposed to any fault with focus etc.

Click to expand...

"moved", but maybe this is incorrect word. Use exposure time as short as possible, set high sensitivity (ISO), for example 400, what allows to set shorter shutter speed, use tripod, Image Stabilization (IS) if your camera has such option, eventually flash. IS reduces blur like picture were taken usin shutter speed faster by something about 2 F stops approximately. I saw such comparison somewhere. For example 1/60 + IS is like 1/250 without IS.
And second picture is too dark - the sky falsed results of light measurement.
However these branches in first foto create an additional problem with focusing.

Thanks all for your replies. The suggestions are eye-opener for me. I'll work on them. My lens is an eight-year old Tamron zoom that doesn't have IS. I'll slowly upgrade my equipment. I have been going to a local park once a week to take pictures of birds. I'll definitely report back here and ask for more advices.

Granville

"Good luck !" like people say what usually means COMPLETELY nothing.