Your goal is to make the bird stand out from the background. Just like when you are photographing humans, your focus is on your subject, and the background is for framing it. I refer to fairly close up images of still birds as “portraits”. Tips for Different Types of Bird Photography How to Take Bird Portraits We recommend continuous autofocus as it is probably better at tracking the birds and keeping them in focus than you. The autofocus can keep the bird sharply in focus even while flying. For instance, you can start with ISO 800 and only increase the value if your images are too dark. It’s important to find the balance between the ISO and other camera settings. How to Choose the ISO for Bird PhotographyĪ higher ISO lets you use faster shutter speeds and higher aperture values while keeping your images correctly exposed.īut it can cause a lot of digital noise and grain in your photos. But it’s more for artistic purposes than documenting wildlife. You can use motion blur creatively to beautifully visualise the bird’s flying patterns. If you are not handholding the camera, you can go slower, but then motion blur can occur. Telephoto lenses are sensitive even to the smallest movements of your hand. If you use a slower shutter speed, your images can easily get blurred. But, given that you shoot birds in motion, there is a high chance that you’ll need to be faster than that, like 1/1000. So if you have a 300mm telephoto lens, set at least a 1/300 value. This is obviously because you would like to freeze movements.įollowing the golden rule, you should operate with a shutter speed as fast as the focal length of your lens. How to Set Your Shutter Speed for Bird Photographyīird photography requires fast shutter speeds. Of course, if you’d like to include more of the environment, showing the plants or other animals near your bird, you can use smaller apertures, such as f/11. So if you have an f/2.8 lens, you most likely will have the sharpest image at f/5.6. Lenses produce the sharpest images one or two stops before the widest value. It’s because having a nicely blurred background enhances and separates the bird from its surroundings.įor this reason, you should go with a wide aperture. You usually want a shallow depth of field in bird photography. You need more control over the settings than that. We wouldn’t recommend the fully-automatic modes as they don’t know that you are aiming for photographing birds. This is optimal especially when you are photographing birds in flight. If you choose this, you can avoid motion blur more easily. Shutter priority mode does the same, but with shutter speed. If you set the aperture, the camera decides the others. They make your workflow faster, and you’ll have more time to concentrate on your composition.Īperture priority mode lets you decide how much light do you let into the sensor, thus how blurred you want the background to be. Here you can set all the important things for yourself and adjust them just as you wish.īut if you want to have an easier job, choose a semi-automatic mode. If you want to control each of the settings, you should choose the manual mode. With a little practice, you’ll be able to set your own home base. And it’s this: Aperture Priority mode, ISO 800, f/5.6, and continuous autofocus. Therefore, when I turn the camera on, I know where I am. It’s settings that I start with, and I tweak them if it’s necessary. When photographing birds and wildlife, I have a “home base” on my camera. It’s probably going to require some time to get used to your camera. But you’ll have to adjust them to your current environment and lighting conditions. We are going to guide you through your options. Also, each camera system has its own features and menu items. There aren’t any bird photography camera settings that work in every situation. What Basic Camera Settings to Use for Bird Photography
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