Camera Settings For Bird Photography

One of the pastimes that many photographers enjoy is bird photography both birds in flight and perched birds. While photographing birds you and your camera must be ready, this article will tell you about some bird photography camera settings that you may consider.

      1.  The 3 Ps

                Always remember its not about the lens or the camera, it is about you. If you have 3 Ps that are necessary for bird photography, than you are all set. 

• Patience
• Perseverance
• Practice

Now start with the Best Camera Setting for Photographing Birds.

• Aperture Priority  

 In this mode you just have to care about aperture or Depth of Field and nothing else, chose one or two stops down than the maximum aperture value to keep the bird and its wings in focus.

• Shutter Priority

If aperture priority is not giving you enough shutter speed to freeze the action or to blur the action, then choose shutter priority. Select the shutter speed you think is the best depending on the birds flight.

• Spot Metering

In flight photography bird is usually not filling the frame making the background consume fair amount of frame area. By selecting spot metering you are telling the camera to only meter for the bird so that you can get the perfect exposure.

• Auto Focus

                   Keep the auto focus as it is, no changes here. Don`t mess with manual focus.

• High Burst Rate

                    You know why. Don`t you ?

      2.  Always track the bird first

Track before you shoot, no compromise here you should track the bird by half pressing the shutter button. If you do not give time to camera to achieve focus,  which generally happen in split seconds, then you are bound to loose all shots.

      3.  Wings Position Is Main Thing

It may be as debatable topic, but it is better to get the wings position right. A full spread wings of a bird looks more attractive compared to any other wings position.

     4.  Background Makes The Picture 

Make it your aim for complementing background, try to get photograph in some background which is not cluttered or plain, white or pale blue. Cluttered background distract the viewer`s attention whereas plain background make the overall image dull. A blurred background will be the best. Generally a completely blurred background makes more interesting bird photograph.

     5.  Shoot in RAW Format

Always shoot in RAW format. A RAW file holds all the data that your camera sensor capture. JPEG format is an image compression standard. It compress the data to reduce the size of the file, by throwing some of the data away. 

     6.  Use Auto White Balance

The auto white balance is a boon to every digital photographer. And this is specially true for bird photographer, choosing just one standard white balance might yield wrong colors. Instead the AWB settings will keep adjusting the as the light changes.

    7. Use the Evaluative / Matrix Metering Modes 

The Evaluative for Canon and Matrix for Nikon, the common belief is that the Matrix Metering mode works best for birds photography. This metering mode considers many aspects such as the subject in focus, the object in the frame, the background, and use a weighting system to arrive at the right exposure value. Its more intelegent than Spot and Center Weighted metering.

       8. Use the Auto ISO Setting

The Auto ISO setting if used properly can solve the lots of problem in bird photography. Most often you need higher shutter speed to freeze the action in bird photography, this means you must use higher ISO. Instead of setting the ISO to be at 400 or 800 its wise to set it to Auto ISO and select the maximum sensitivity to 800. You can also set the maximum sensitivity to ISO 1600 or even 3200 depending on noise levels.   

       9. Learn to Use Histogram

The Histogram is your best friend, if you are not using it you are loosing a lot of image potential. Every time you take a photo you must check the histogram. Don`t relay on the LCD monitor. LCD brightness and the ambient light can fool you into believing that a photo is over or under exposed. Lets understand with the examples, By looking at the graph as under you would be able to see if the photograph is properly exposed, under exposed or over exposed. If the photograph is skewed toward the right hand side of the Histogram your image is over exposed.     

And if it is skewed towards the left, your image is under exposed, so learn reading Histogram for better results.

        10. Enable the Highlight Indicator 

This is an another and useful bird photography tip, the highlight indicator widly know as blinkers, clubbed with the histogram and Exposure compensation can assure you the best exposure at all time. Make sure using it from today. The highlighter indicates any overexposed areas in your image, its very hard to know if you have overexposed image or not just by looking at the LCD monitor. If you have just a slight overexposed area in you image, thats where the blinkers come in handy. You will see blinkers in the overexposed area when you enable Highlight Indicator in your camera. 

As mentioned in under given images how to activate the Highlight Indicator in Nikon

And in Canon, both camera have different type of settings while the work of the Highlight Indicator in both camera is same. 

        11. Use AE/AF Lock or the AF-ON Button 

One of the biggest issue that the bird photographer faces is to switch between AF-S (Single Sot) to AF-C (Servo) mode. AF ON button is use for back button focusing, instead of half pressing the shutter button to start focusing you can use the AF-ON button to trigger auto focus functionality.

When you are using the back button focusing make sure you have set the shutter button to only take photos and to not auto focus. This will leave the focus only for the AF-ON button, now all that you have to do is always use AF-C mode so that you are ready for the action.

Whenever you release the AF-ON button it will automatically lock the auto focus which means, it will work as AF-S. If you don`t have AF-ON button you can likely configure any other button, AE-L / AF-L button to do this.     

Conclusion 

If you can bring these camera settings into practice in your daily bird photography, you will see a drastic improvement in your images. But remember settings and equipments can only take you so far. They are just means to an end, not the end itself.

Don`t try to pressurize or overwhelm yourself with the information, take one tip at a time and practice it. Every thing can be mastered over time with the right mentor and right practice, you will eventually become an excellent bird photographer. Just keep at it.