Photographing small birds in flight.
27th February 2023
Getting sharp flight shots of birds is difficult, especially small birds because their wing beats are very quick and their flight patterns are very unpredictable. Bigger birds in flight are much slower and most of the time you can guess where they are going to fly and this makes it much easier.
With regard to small birds, in a part of my garden I have a small and deliberately unkempt area of about 100 square yards, there is a log pile there and a pond measuring about 8ft x 6ft with a volume of about 200 gallons and dragonflies regularly emerge from this pond every summer. I have also erected a permanent wooden bird observation hide about the size of a garden shed in the middle of this area. I have my elevated pool at the bottom of the garden along with some perches I have erected and where seed is provided throughout the winter. This allows me to get close up shots of a variety of birds feeding, drinking and bathing. Adjoining the garden there is a wooded copse where a variety of birds roost and nest and subsequently come to feed in the garden. The perches are aligned specifically with my good neighbour’s crop field in the distance, which provides, when using a telephoto lens, a variety of buttery smooth pastel coloured backgrounds. I like backgrounds because they are just as important as the subject you are photographing.
Yesterday I noticed a small flock of Goldfinch feeding and landing on my perches. Goldfinches are particularly quarrelsome, especially with each other when feeding. They don’t like another bird to have any of what they consider to be their seeds. When they can’t tolerate each other any longer they fly up and perform a kind of irritated dance in mid-air. This can be quite amusing, but very difficult to see in detail because it happens so fast. Yesterday I decided to try and capture the action, it would be no mean feat and I realised that before I started.
Here is a blow by blow account of how I went about it.
1. I removed all seed from the feeding station and cut two grooves in an elevated log perch I had already erected.
2. I filled the two grooves with sunflower seed so they were the only food source available. This concentrated where the birds would be all of the time so I didn’t have to watch multiple areas – it’s easier.
3. I set up my Canon R5 and 100-500 f7.1 lens on a tripod behind some camo netting in my observation hide where I could sit on a chair for comfort and concentration.
4. I set the camera to full frame to catch the widest area of action and also that’s 45 mega pixels, so I knew I could crop in which I thought would be necessary.
5. I pre-focussed the lens on the seed grooves in the log to get the right distance for sharpness then switched the autofocus off to prevent ‘Hunting’.
6. I also zoomed the lens out to 300mm to cover even more area.
7. I fitted my Hanhel wireless trigger, (see review), on the R5 so all I had to do was press the button at the appropriate time.
8. I knew that to capture the action I would need a shutter speed of around 4000/sec and a frame rate of 20frames/sec. To do this you need light and plenty of it, thereby avoiding too much ISO elevation.
9. However, I soon found out that to achieve a shutter speed of 4000/sec in the available light on the day I would still need an ISO of above 2000. On a brighter sunnier day a lower ISO could be used which is always preferable.
When everything was set up I sat in my hide and waited for the action to start.
Initially there was only one Goldfinch there and it was allowing other birds to feed. I had to wait for more Goldfinches to arrive, they duly did and before long the inevitable action started. Numerous times they flew up squabbling in the air above the perch, sometimes out of the frame but other times just where I wanted them to be. You have to concentrate and be really quick to catch the action, but finally my efforts paid off and I was able to capture some reasonable images. After cropping the images contained some noise, but this was easily removed using Topaz ‘Denoise’ software. I highly recommend the basic package of this software because for just £79 ‘for life’ it is well worth it just to clean up your images. However, if you were really close up to the action there would be less cropping and subsequently less noise so the choice is yours.
As a final note to anyone who has reservations about buying the Canon 100-500 f7.1 lens and thinking they would only being able to operate it on anything but the brightest of days, my answer is they shouldn’t worry because this lightweight, highly portable and very sharp lens is a quality piece of kit.
I will be trying again on sunnier days.
With regard to small birds, in a part of my garden I have a small and deliberately unkempt area of about 100 square yards, there is a log pile there and a pond measuring about 8ft x 6ft with a volume of about 200 gallons and dragonflies regularly emerge from this pond every summer. I have also erected a permanent wooden bird observation hide about the size of a garden shed in the middle of this area. I have my elevated pool at the bottom of the garden along with some perches I have erected and where seed is provided throughout the winter. This allows me to get close up shots of a variety of birds feeding, drinking and bathing. Adjoining the garden there is a wooded copse where a variety of birds roost and nest and subsequently come to feed in the garden. The perches are aligned specifically with my good neighbour’s crop field in the distance, which provides, when using a telephoto lens, a variety of buttery smooth pastel coloured backgrounds. I like backgrounds because they are just as important as the subject you are photographing.
Yesterday I noticed a small flock of Goldfinch feeding and landing on my perches. Goldfinches are particularly quarrelsome, especially with each other when feeding. They don’t like another bird to have any of what they consider to be their seeds. When they can’t tolerate each other any longer they fly up and perform a kind of irritated dance in mid-air. This can be quite amusing, but very difficult to see in detail because it happens so fast. Yesterday I decided to try and capture the action, it would be no mean feat and I realised that before I started.
Here is a blow by blow account of how I went about it.
1. I removed all seed from the feeding station and cut two grooves in an elevated log perch I had already erected.
2. I filled the two grooves with sunflower seed so they were the only food source available. This concentrated where the birds would be all of the time so I didn’t have to watch multiple areas – it’s easier.
3. I set up my Canon R5 and 100-500 f7.1 lens on a tripod behind some camo netting in my observation hide where I could sit on a chair for comfort and concentration.
4. I set the camera to full frame to catch the widest area of action and also that’s 45 mega pixels, so I knew I could crop in which I thought would be necessary.
5. I pre-focussed the lens on the seed grooves in the log to get the right distance for sharpness then switched the autofocus off to prevent ‘Hunting’.
6. I also zoomed the lens out to 300mm to cover even more area.
7. I fitted my Hanhel wireless trigger, (see review), on the R5 so all I had to do was press the button at the appropriate time.
8. I knew that to capture the action I would need a shutter speed of around 4000/sec and a frame rate of 20frames/sec. To do this you need light and plenty of it, thereby avoiding too much ISO elevation.
9. However, I soon found out that to achieve a shutter speed of 4000/sec in the available light on the day I would still need an ISO of above 2000. On a brighter sunnier day a lower ISO could be used which is always preferable.
When everything was set up I sat in my hide and waited for the action to start.
Initially there was only one Goldfinch there and it was allowing other birds to feed. I had to wait for more Goldfinches to arrive, they duly did and before long the inevitable action started. Numerous times they flew up squabbling in the air above the perch, sometimes out of the frame but other times just where I wanted them to be. You have to concentrate and be really quick to catch the action, but finally my efforts paid off and I was able to capture some reasonable images. After cropping the images contained some noise, but this was easily removed using Topaz ‘Denoise’ software. I highly recommend the basic package of this software because for just £79 ‘for life’ it is well worth it just to clean up your images. However, if you were really close up to the action there would be less cropping and subsequently less noise so the choice is yours.
As a final note to anyone who has reservations about buying the Canon 100-500 f7.1 lens and thinking they would only being able to operate it on anything but the brightest of days, my answer is they shouldn’t worry because this lightweight, highly portable and very sharp lens is a quality piece of kit.
I will be trying again on sunnier days.