One way of becoming a better birder is to photograph birds. It helps you to identify unfamiliar birds, maybe even a rarity, and it also results in your paying more attention to the beautiful details on many of our feathered friends. Doug Beach, editor of the Crest, asked if I might be willing to write an article on the basics of bird photography. I guess my qualifications for this consist of the fact that I’ve taken lots and lots of bird photographs and sometimes get some nice looking pictures – as do a lot of other photographers in our club. And it’s quite likely that some of those photographers would have different opinions of what is needed to get good bird photographs. So whatever ideas you may get from this article, I encourage you to approach other photographers you know and ask them questions. That said, let’s get started.
How hard is it to get decent pictures of birds?
Common sense probably already tells you that taking bird photos is one of the most challenging kinds of photography there is. Unlike scenes you can study thoughtfully and return to when the light is just right, or set up carefully ahead of time, bird photography is literally photography on the fly! Birds, with a few notable exceptions; don’t like us to get close to them; seldom stand still for more than a moment; are often in shadowy places or behind tangled branches; and even when appearing to be stationary, are actually rapidly moving their heads and bodies as they constantly keep an eye on their surroundings. Getting a picture that shows the level of detail you require, whether enough for just a clear ID, or an artistic photograph is often as much about luck as skill. Never-the-less, the right equipment will make it a lot easier.
What kind of camera or other equipment do you need for bird photography?
Because of the proliferation of digital cameras, there are lots of good choices. Under the right circumstances, you can get a pretty good picture of a bird with your phone camera and if that’s all you have with you when you see a bird you want to photograph, give it a try. Some birders buy adapters for their phones from a company called PhoneSkope and use them to take pictures through their scopes, sometimes with pretty good results, but that’s a whole different topic.
HOWEVER – If you really plan to do a lot of bird photography, I think you’ll need 2 important items. (1) A camera that is easy for you to use, has some certain features that I will discuss below, and is within your budget. (2) A good photo editing program (and of course a computer to run it on) that you feel comfortable using. Let’s look at specifics for each.
What features are important in the camera?
Here is a list of features, all of which I find particularly helpful in bird photography.
- A viewfinder you hold up to your eye that is a very bright, sharp viewfinder AND is an electronic viewfinder (EVF – I’ll explain why this is important as we progress) that shows you the exact image that’s on your chip. Cameras that you hold out in front of you and look at a screen on the back are not at all satisfactory for looking at small birds, especially on a branch against a bright sky.
- Some specific focusing capabilities;
- The ability to focus electronically (with a button) or manually (with a focusing ring) independent of the exposure.
- The ability to display focusing highlights. This shows a colored shimmering around the part of the image in the viewfinder that’s acceptably in focus. (unique to EVF)
- The ability to enlarge the area being focused on in the viewfinder. (unique to EVF)
- At least a 400mm maximum optical zoom. It’s also helpful to have additional digital zoom capabilities (unique to EVF) which many cameras will offer. There are cameras with “super” optical zooms up to 3000mm!!! If that sounds to good to be true, it is. That focal length comes with a lot of downsides as well.
- Your camera should allow for on the fly control of over/under exposure and f/stops or shutter speeds while you’re taking the pictures and see the effect on the picture in the viewfinder (unique to EVF)
- The ability to review your pictures in the viewfinder (unique to EVF). Even in bright light, you still want to be able to look at the results of your pictures and zoom in to see detail.
- Your camera should have a rear screen that is flexible – able to flip up, down, reverse or disappear allowing you to view from unusual angles in especially difficult situations.
- The ability to start a movie instantly (especially helpful in identifying unknown birds that might be a rarity)
- Very good image stabilization capability.
- Your camera should be lightweight and quick to start.
Now all this may sound expensive, but surprisingly, it doesn’t have to be. EVF’s are just catching on now in the high end cameras. They’re called “mirrorless” because they no longer have the mirror of a single lens reflex which directed the light up and through the viewfinder, but had to flip out of the way to let the light hit the film when you took the picture. However, mirrorless digital cameras have actually been around for years in the “bridge” cameras or “pro-sumer” cameras. While you can spend several thousand dollars for camera with the features I mentioned above, you can also find ones with all those features for $300 – $1500. The one I use is about $800. My first digital camera in 2003 was a 4 mp Kodak with a very fine 10x zoom lens and an EVF that let me see the exposure I’d set before I took the picture and review the picture afterwards in the viewfinder. It took wonderful pictures and opened a whole new world of photography to me. I ditched my 2 Nikon SLR’s and 3 lenses that I used to carry around and have used this kind of camera ever since, in part because it’s so nice for birding. Now I’m only carrying a single, relatively lightweight camera (no interchangeable lenses) and considering I’m also wearing binoculars and sometimes carrying a scope, it’s nice to keep the camera simple. But it still has all the features mentioned above Mine resides in a holster case on my right hip. From there I can grab it and shoot pretty quickly if I need to.
Why do I need a photo editing program?
Many people think that using a digital editing program is somehow “cheating” or altering the real picture. While it’s true that you can use these programs to completely change reality, it’s also true that for a bird photographer it is quite necessary to use one so you can best reproduce reality! Let’s consider the ways in which we might want to use a digital editor for bird photography.
- Cameras and digital chips by their nature, change the reality of what we saw when we were taking the picture – increasing contrast (making darks darker and light areas lighter). We can use our digital editor to reverse this by reducing contrast, increasing shadow detail and decreasing highlights.
- Especially important for bird photographers, digital editors are quite good at small increases in the sharpness of pictures helping us see details that might help us better identify a bird. It can also help at reducing background noise if we had to shoot at a very high ISO.
- Many things can alter the color balance of picture and a digital editor can allow us to restore the original colors as we saw them when taking the picture.
- Perhaps most importantly, we can CROP! And there are very few bird pictures we take, where we don’t want to end up cropping. In effect, cropping is like adding a zoom! When you crop a picture to ¼ of it’s original size, that’s the same as doubling the focal length of the lens as you took the picture. Your 400mm becomes an 800mm. Of course as you crop in, you can loose some picture quality, but if your initial image is a good one, you may still end up with a very usable picture.
So where should I start?
I would suggest you start in your back yard, and with whatever camera you already have. A lot of my initial bird photography was at my own feeders and the trees and bushes around them. The wonderful thing about digital photography is that it costs NOTHING to take pictures, so you can practice as much as you like to see what works and what doesn’t. Take pictures of chickadees, cardinals, titmice, sparrows, bluejays and whatever else shows up in your yard. The more you practice, the more you will learn what techniques work for you.
Are the specific techniques or “tips” that you could pass on.
Here are a few suggestions that might prove helpful.
- The most important aspect of any bird picture is sharpness. It’s critical to get the bird in focus. Some photographers point the camera at a bird and hold down the shutter button taking lots of shots hoping the autofocus works on some of them. I prefer to manually focus each shot. I have a focus button which us not tied to the shutter release, so I can focus and have that focus not change when I press the shutter release. (focus lock can do something similar, but then you have to unlock to refocus – a focus button is much easier). At all times, when I’m in this manual focus mode, I have focusing “peaking” turned on. When a subject is in focus, the bright parts of the image will shimmer in a color (selectable) telling me the subject is in focus. If I want to be more sure of the focus, turning the focusing ring will enlarge the center part of the picture to show me finer detail. This is especially helpful when, as you often must do with birds, you must focus through branches or foliage which often confuse autofocus.
- When photographing a bird that’s on a branch against bright sky, your automatic meter is pretty worthless. However, with an electronic viewfinder and the ability to quickly change your exposure, you will be able to see what your picture is going to look like. Focus on the bird (which will initially be silhouetted with almost no detail). Then increase exposure compensation. The sky will start to wash out, but the details of the bird – color and marking will begin to become clear in the EVF, making identification much easier.
- Practice holding the camera very steady. A viewfinder is helpful for this as it let’s you brace the camera against your forehead. If there’s a post to lean against or a wall to put your elbows on, that’s good too. However, often those assists are not available as you’re moving around trying to catch the bird. Likewise, a tripod can really slow you down! One of the best techniques you can learn to reduce camera shake is to pay attention to how you press the shutter release button. That is often a source of significant camera shake. Learning to squeeze very gently so you don’t push the front of the camera down is the best thing you can do. Using a timer to release the shutter will eliminate that push, but isn’t usually helpful in bird photography since you’re trying to get the bird at a specific instant as it constantly moves.
- Other items that can affect image sharpness include focal length, shutter speed, lens aperture (f/stop), ISO (sensitivity to light) and sensor size. Bird photography is a balance between all these. That said, it doesn’t mean you have to analyze all the things in every shot – you’d never get anything. But you should be aware of how they may be affecting your shots.
- Focal Length – the longer the optical focal length, the more any shake is magnified, so the more important it is to hold the camera steady. Note that digital zooming does not affect this – it’s really just cropping in the camera. However some cameras have sophisticated programs built in to enhance the digital zoom making it look better than cropping might.
- Shutter Speed – The faster the shutter speed, the less chance for either bird motion or camera shake. But faster shutter speeds may require wider open f/stops and/or higher ISO’s, both of which have their downsides.
- f/stop – In general, most lenses tend to produce their best results in the middle of their f/stop range. I mostly shoot in “Aperture Priority” mode. This means I choose the f/stop and the camera chooses the shutter speed and ISO. I use f/5.6 for most of my shooting when I can. However, if I’m looking for the fastest possible shutter speed, I’ll open all the way up, f/4.0 at 400mm or f/2.8 at 24mm. But the wider the aperture, the less the depth of field and that’s most noticeable at long focal lengths where I usually shoot birds. f/8.0 (maximum on my camera) gives the greatest depth of field (the range of distance from the camera that the subject will be in acceptable focus). It’s like squinting to make something appear sharper. For the most part, I stick with the f/5.6 as the best balance of theses items unless I really need faster shutter speed.
- ISO – this refers to the sensitivity of the sensor to light. As ISO increases, the chip is set to a greater sensitivity to light. Doubling the ISO means you can use a shutter speed that is twice as fast to get the same exposure. But it also means that the quality of the image deteriorates to some extent. My camera allows me to set an ISO limit which I set to 1600. That means that it won’t automatically set the ISO greater than that value. I can manually set it higher, but I seldom do unless I have to shoot in very low light and am willing to accept anything to help me identify the bird.
- Sensor Size – Larger sensors have both more pixels and larger pixels – both of which are good. BUT – they’re more expensive and they require larger heavier lenses for telephoto shooting. Your phone has a really tiny sensor, and most super-zoom cameras have about a ¼ in sensor. You can have a longer zoom because you have a smaller sensor – it’s kind of like pre-cropping the picture. There’s no question that a $6000 full frame camera with a 400mm lens will get a sharper image I can enlarge more clearly than my $800 camera with a 1 inch sensor. But carrying around a 6 lb. camera/lens combo that’s almost 2 feet long has it’s own disadvantages compared to my 1.8 lb camera that’s only a few inches long when I’m looking for birds. So the pros and cons of cost vs. convenience is something each photographer has to decide for themselves.
- Don’t wait for the perfect shot. Once a bird is gone, you’re not likely to find it again unless you’re lucky. Take your shots as quickly as possible, then try for better ones. Keep working at it until the bird flies away or you are really happy with the shots you have. You don’t want to disturb the bird, but you also want to get as close as possible. Be patient and move slowly! When you move, try never to move towards the bird. Move diagonally in a zig-zag pattern (surroundings permitting) so that you’re a little closer each time. If you have to move straight towards the bird, move slowly a couple of steps, then wait. Always move very, very slowly, then freeze to see if the bird reacts. Then take your picture. Then repeat the process! A final note on this – NEVER move in front of other birders who are trying to view the same bird. You not only don’t want to block their view, but you don’t want to be the cause of that bird deciding to fly off. Your photograph does not take precedence over non-photographers seeing the bird!
So grab your camera, and start using it as a tool to help you identify the birds you’re seeing and feel free to contact me – Chris Fisher at ChrisF001@aol.com if you have additional questions.
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