Bird Watching: Blazing fast shutter speeds and high ISO are the way to go., 1 by 2dCousinDave

2dCousinDave wrote:
Hack

I too am interested in getting in flight shots. Well, really I look for action, which obviously includes in flight shots. In fact, almost every time I take a shot I am trying to anticipate movement. And I use AV mode nearly all of the time. In fact, the only time I use TV mode is when I am inside, and using a flash because I don't want the shutter to be too fast and open and close before the image gets back to the camera. I rarely, if ever use M.

Obviously, the closer you are to the bird, the faster your shutter has to click. Since most of my shots are inside 15 feet I have to have fast shutter speeds. I would prefer to stop him in flight even if it means increased noise. I have deleted far more blurred wing shots than I have shots with high noise. In any event, I have found that the Canon DSLR's, and in particular the 40D and the 1D Mark III, handle high ISO very well with relatively little noise.

I try to focus on the closest eye and will sometimes keep a shot if the head and eye is sharp, even if some or most of the rest of the bird is OOF or the wings have motion blur.

Another worry is depth of field. Often if you shoot wide open, especially at f/1.8 to 2.8, at a distance of 10 or 15 feet, the DOF is only an inch or two so if you are trying to get two or more birds, perched or in motion, parts of one or both will be out of focus.. That happened to me with the shot I got of the bluebird on the holly branch just before Christmas. Three times I caught her as she plucked and ate a holly berry but the DOF was so shallow that as she reached for the berry her head and the berry were slightly OOF.

Here is the best of the three shots. I did all I could to improve it but was still disappointed with it.