• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Help getting sharper images (1 Viewer)

TOF Trev

Well-known member
Help, even with my Canon 7D and Canon 100-400, I am struggling to get pin sharp shots of birds in flight.
I was on a birding day this week and was advised to up the ISO to 1250 and us the AV setting to get more light. I was using Al Servo. Some reasonable results but nothing pin sharp.
I am off to Florida shortly and would love to get some pin sharp pictures.
Anyone offer some help please
:C
 
Hi Trev.

I wonder what your shutter speed was for these pics. I would suggest that as a general rule the faster the shutter speed the better. In the UK your shutter speed is mostly going to be selected as a compromise with ISO, it's a case of how far do you dare go!

I am not sure how long you have been taking pics of birds so please forgive me if I am telling you something that is already perfectly obvious to you, but bird photography is really very difficult and birds in flight may well be the most difficult 'subset' there is. Technique is massively important and necessary to get good BIF pics. I find this website useful:

http://www.johnstuartclarke.co.uk/photographing-birds-in-flight

I read it and read it again. I have read lots of other stuff on BIF, some of the best advise, IMO, is here on bird forum, it just takes a while to dig it up (putting 'flight' or 'birds' into the search engine of a forum on bird watching can tend to throw up too many results:CB :), so I often search for things on BF using google and just add 'bird forum' to whatever I want which usually works).

I get out one day a week from dawn until dusk (targeting sitting, swimming and flying birds - I am not a BIF specialist!). I am still utterly delighted to get a pin sharp shot of a BIF. Put another way, I am still utter sh1te at BIF. That may just be me;). One day I will be good but, for me at least, it's going to take many many hours and days to get to the stage of always expecting pin sharp shots.

Best of luck in FL, at least you should get some good light there!

George
 
First defence - I am not a skilled BIF photographer, but these are my thoughts on the matter....

I find my 7D and 100-400 to be a disappointing combination for pixel peeping and big crops because the lens is not sharp enough wide open, and f/5.6 is not exactly fast to begin with. The best way to good results is to fill the frame as much as you can and reduce cropping to the minimum.

Beyond that, try stopping down to f/6.3 at least, if not f/8, and aim for a shutter speed of 1/1000 or faster. If you have bright conditions and your birds are well lit from the front (full sunshine) then you should be able to aim for around 1/1600 at f/8 and 400 ISO. Turn off IS altogether at those sorts of shutter speeds, and probably regardless when shooting BIF.

Other than that it comes down to setting up the AF right and mastering your technique for tracking the bird and releasing the shutter smoothly. Firing in short bursts of three or so might help you pick out a sharper example from a small bunch.

This was with my 7D and 100-400 at 400mm, 1/1000, f/8, 400 ISO. It is slightly cropped and has a little NR in Lightroom.

EDIT : Added another with 7D and 100-400 at 400mm, 1/800, f/5.6, 800 ISO. Once again a little cropping and NR in Lightroom. It does not bear pixel peeping well, but can still make a picture.
 

Attachments

  • 20120729_091131_5029_LR.jpg
    20120729_091131_5029_LR.jpg
    184.7 KB · Views: 205
  • 20100215_110221_3914_LR.jpg
    20100215_110221_3914_LR.jpg
    178.7 KB · Views: 229
Last edited:
First defence - I am not a skilled BIF photographer, but these are my thoughts on the matter....

I find my 7D and 100-400 to be a disappointing combination for pixel peeping and big crops because the lens is not sharp enough wide open, and f/5.6 is not exactly fast to begin with. The best way to good results is to fill the frame as much as you can and reduce cropping to the minimum.

Beyond that, try stopping down to f/6.3 at least, if not f/8, and aim for a shutter speed of 1/1000 or faster. If you have bright conditions and your birds are well lit from the front (full sunshine) then you should be able to aim for around 1/1600 at f/8 and 400 ISO. Turn off IS altogether at those sorts of shutter speeds, and probably regardless when shooting BIF.

Other than that it comes down to setting up the AF right and mastering your technique for tracking the bird and releasing the shutter smoothly. Firing in short bursts of three or so might help you pick out a sharper example from a small bunch.

This was with my 7D and 100-400 at 400mm, 1/1000, f/8, 400 ISO. It is slightly cropped and has a little NR in Lightroom.

EDIT : Added another with 7D and 100-400 at 400mm, 1/800, f/5.6, 800 ISO. Once again a little cropping and NR in Lightroom. It does not bear pixel peeping well, but can still make a picture.

Excellent photos and good advice; I particularly like the shot of the Mallard putting the brakes on in midair. And I agree: sharpness is certainly important but pixel peeping can easily become obsessive and get in the way of satisfaction with anything at all.
 
Last edited:
I am off to Florida shortly and would love to get some pin sharp pictures.

Just my opinion........I have the 7D/100-400L too.

You will have very good light there which will be a great help.

If I were you I'd set aside one of the 'C' functions for BIFs. Use M mode. Try 1/1600 S/S, F8 and ISO 400. AI servo of course and continuous high speed shooting. Perhaps AF expansion from the custom functions.

If it's really sunny I'd raise the S/S to 1/2000 or higher, if the light is not so good I'd try f5.6. If the light is really good you can drop down to ISO 200.

My own experience with the 7D and 100-400L is that ISO 800 is as high as I want to go and f8 is best for sharpness. ISO 1250 and 5.6 sounds like it would pushing the gear too far.

Some of my BIF shots are here. I am no expert.
 
Just an update on my earlier post. I've just installed the 15 day trial of the Nik software collection from Google and ran the Dfine noise reduction on one of the 7D images. With the noise pretty much obliterated I was able to hit the file harder with sharpening within Lightroom.

Here is a 100% crop showing the raw image without edits and then with Dfine to reduce noise and Lightroom to sharpen.

There's a copy of the reworked image file HERE large enough to fill a full HD monitor. To see it at its best make sure your browser does not resize it to fit.
 

Attachments

  • 20130326_141230_.JPG
    20130326_141230_.JPG
    84.8 KB · Views: 243
Warning! This thread is more than 11 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top