shooting birds in flight or motion!

[Brownbear]

Hi Mark,

Wow, gorgeous shots! The first is truly special..

I still have a lot to learn about photography before upgrading my camera and lens, but when my skills and knowledge are there it is great to know about the higher end cameras and lens. Thank you.

[rpcrowe]

Regarding Top Grade Lenses... There are many lower priced lenses and cameras which will perform admirably when the photographer is not using these lenses and cameras at the extreme edges of their capability. It is when you are stretching the envelope (shooting wide open and following fast moving subjects at a high ISO) that the expensive lenses and cameras come into their own.

I would suggest that birds in flight may be one of the most difficult venues in photography and one in which top-line equipment will provide the photographer a better chance of achieving great image quality.

One of the most efficient Canon camera/lens combinations, IMO, for birds in flight photography is the Canon 7D and 400mm f/5.6L lens. This combination has exceptionally fast and accurate autofocus and very decent high ISO capablity. The new 1Dx and 400mm f/5.6L lens might even be better but, the price is a great deal higher than the 7D and 400mm f/5.6L. I would consider the 7D as the best performance for price camera when shooting fast moving subjects and the fact that the 400mm f/5.6L can achieve excellent imagery when shot wide open is great plus for this lens...

[Brownbear]

Here are my test shots from this morning, using the Tamron Lens and ISO 800 on every shot.. not edited or cropped... The exposure is far better, and I can see some noise, but the sky is washed out... They still need to be sharper, but I like how I was able to catch more of the positions in flight (thank you everyone)... I also have several that are blurry and out of focus like yesterday...







Manual
SS Varied from 1/1000 - 1/1250
Aperature Varied from 5 to 8
Exposure +1
300-400 mm
ISO 800
Matrix metering
I tried my best to get the light from the side or the front. Achieving clear focus is challenging.

Do I need to just keep practicing at higher ISOs and learn to edit? With respect to editing I know I can select just the pelican and put it in a blue sky but is it just me or is it really challenged to select a bird nicely and manage to get in all the feathers and tail, feet, etc?

And here is a duck shot from this morning at 1S0 1600 cropped to show how bad the noise is

F8 SS 1600 ISO 1600 Exposure +1.7 400 mm




Thank you for posting this question on birds in flight... I have learned a lot and I hope you have learned from my challenges, too.

[Markvetnz]

Christina

I think you are too worried about the noise issue. For Pelicans (relatively slow birds that move in a predictable stright line direction) 1/500th of a second would be fine, so you can drop the ISO to 400. If you use a 5.6 aperture you could even get away with ISO 200. Remember that the further you are from the birds the harder it is to get pinpoint focus. These are not bad shots. Try to get the whole bird in the shot. Shoot at the highest possible number of shots per second. Set the camera to track the focus automatically. Take bursts of 4 to 5 shots at a time. This will help you nail the shot more often than not.

[Markvetnz]

Regarding Top Grade Lenses... There are many lower priced lenses and cameras which will perform admirably when the photographer is not using these lenses and cameras at the extreme edges of their capability. It is when you are stretching the envelope (shooting wide open and following fast moving subjects at a high ISO) that the expensive lenses and cameras come into their own.

I would suggest that birds in flight may be one of the most difficult venues in photography and one in which top-line equipment will provide the photographer a better chance of achieving great image quality.

One of the most efficient Canon camera/lens combinations, IMO, for birds in flight photography is the Canon 7D and 400mm f/5.6L lens. This combination has exceptionally fast and accurate autofocus and very decent high ISO capablity. The new 1Dx and 400mm f/5.6L lens might even be better but, the price is a great deal higher than the 7D and 400mm f/5.6L. I would consider the 7D as the best performance for price camera when shooting fast moving subjects and the fact that the 400mm f/5.6L can achieve excellent imagery when shot wide open is great plus for this lens...

I agree with what you say. The 7D at its price is excellent. However it is not in the same league as the 1d iv or the 1DX. What I think people lose sight of is that when they see an excellent photo of a bird in a magazine and they try to reproduce the shot, they struggle to get it right. Chances are that the magazine shot was taken by a pro with top end pro gear. I know from personal experience having used the 7d with a 500mm f4L prime lens and the 1D iv with a 400m f2.8L prime, the 1D outperformed the 7D in every respect, and especially when it came to AI servo auto tracking.

I guess what I am saying is that we all need to be realistic about the limitations our equipment places on us. A 550D with a kit lens is just no going to cut it for birds in flight.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Mark...

I am practicing on pelicans because they are plentiful (and i love them)... However, I have been trying to get a shot of Mexican Green Parrotlets, Blackthroated Magpie Jays, Black-bellied whistling ducks, and Chachalacas... All fly at low light conditions and/or hide in dark places in trees...

[herbert]

Thank you... Very helpful...

Can you please explain further I don't understand what you mean by this statement (I have my photos printed so it sounds to me like noise needs to be minimized)
Printing often does not downsize an image so the noise is still present. However the pixels can be printed much smaller than the pixels you see on the screen. This is effectively does the same thing since the noise becomes invisible.

Let's start with a 4000x3000 pixel image.

If you want to display it on the web at 800 pixels you will have to downsize the image 5 times. That process gets rid of a lot of noise. A simple way to imagine it is that you take the average value for every 25 pixels. The results have less variation and so look smoother.

If you want to print the image at 300 ppi then the image will be 13x10 inches. Each dot comes from a pixel and will be 1/300 inches in size. Too small to see at 18 inches viewing distance. For comparison a computer screen has about 100 ppi and the pixels are brighter. This makes the noise far easier to see on a monitor especially when viewed at 100% than when looking at prints.

If you crop your image and output the same size then you have enlarged the noise. At a certain enlargement you will start to see it.

Looking at your images the noise should not be a major problem in the background. Note that you see noise the most in smooth areas of image tone. Noise is also the worst in the blue channel as this light is the worst at passing into your camera sensor to be recorded. So blue skies are a real problem. However the saving grace is that there is no detail in the blue sky anyway.

The best solution is to perform a lot of noise reduction on the sky and then blend it with your subject which has had no, or very little, noise reduction. A common cheat is to do a Gaussian blur on the background and give it that smooth effect similar to out of focus areas. Just be careful to not over smooth the background or do the same smoothing on objects that are different distances away. It is easy to spot in an image and looks wrong. However with the sky it is all very far away and should be a good starting point to try out the technique.

If you do not know how to do selective noise reduction on an image then post the details of your image software (photoshop, elements, lightroom, aperture, etc.) and someone will be able to help you out.

If you can get rid of the noise then you will be more confident in pushing the exposure up a bit more to get detail in your subject. The next step will be to try and fix your colour fringing problems on high contrast edges, or at least come to a compromise on exposure between noise at low exposure and fringing at high exposure.

Alex

[Brownbear]

Now, I understand. Thank you!

I've been reading up on editing, and I understand the process of selective noise reduction, it's just a matter of practicing selecting things accurately, which I will do. I was not aware of the Guassian Blur technique and will give it a try. I also purchased lightroom 4.1 and I'm just now figuring out how to fix the colour fringing, etc..

Thank you for all your advice (and everyone else)... Now I just need to study all the new info on birds in flight and put it into practice... And one day I hope to post a perfect photo of a flying Black-bellied whistling duck!

Thank you