Camera Settings that I use for Photographing Birds in Flight

I've recently been trying to do a little more photography of birds in flight. I've found this to be the most difficult form of wild bird photography and still, at the time of writing (August 2007), have a lot of work to do to get it right. The following is what I've learned so far, however, if any more experienced photographers think I'm getting it all wrong, I'd welcome their comments.

I've found that best results are obtained on sunny days but either early morning or late evening. A little low sunshine seems to illuminate the bird better when it's in flight but if the sun is too high (mid day), the bird can be too heavily shadowed underneath. Overcast days for me, make flight photography more difficult. Pale birds like gulls and terns often look lost against a grey sky and the lack of contrast makes the cameras auto focus slow. Dark birds often just come out as silhouettes. Low sun has worked best for me. Of course, if you can get a high position over the top of a low flying bird, the lack of sun light may not be such an issue. However, low flying birds present problems of their own.

Low flying birds will usually appear below the horizon and hence may not have such a uniform background as the sky would provide. Such high contrast backgrounds may 'fool' the auto focus, causing it to lock on to the background rather than the subject. I've not really found a away around this other than to try to position yourself so as to ensure that your background is as uniform as possible. Turning off auto focus and manually focusing for flight shots is not, in my opinion, an option. Manual focus is just way too slow in most cases and I wouldn't even bother to try it.

Auto focus for flight pictures needs to be fast but I noticed that I often can't get it locked on fast enough. However, there are a few things that have helped to speed it up a little:-

• 1. Remove any teleconverters. For non-flying subjects I almost always have my 1.4x teleconverter attached to my 500mm lens. This does however, slow down the auto focus and that small delay may make the difference between a successful shot and a missed shot. In addition, the lower telephoto zoom will help you to locate the bird more quickly through your view finder, also aiding fast focus-lock.
• 2. My modern lenses have a focus distance range switch. On my EF 100-400 for example, I can focus on objects as close as 1.8m. I can however, flip a switch to reduce the minimum focusing distance to 6.0m. This makes focusing on more distant objects much quicker. The EF 500 has a similar switch but with three settings, the highest being 10m to infinity. I nearly always have it on this setting anyway, but if your lens has this feature, then use it for flight shots.
• 3. Finally, my camera has a number of auto focusing points (common on most modern SLR cameras). These are visible as tiny squares through the view finder. For most non-flying shots, I have the camera set to use the centre point only. However, for flight shots, especially against a uniform background, I've found that activating them all helps achieve a focus-lock much more quickly. It's pretty obvious that this would happen since you have a greater portion of the frame looking for contrasting areas to focus on.

Achieving your initial focus-lock is one thing. Maintaining it on a moving object it another. Fortunately most digital SLR cameras have a neat way to help you with this. They almost all (if not all) have an auto focus tracking mode. On my Canon camera it is called 'AI Servo' mode. Using this setting, the camera will retain focus on a moving object as long as it remains in view and in the active auto focus zone. This is where having all auto-focus points active further helps. If you just have a single auto focus point active, it is harder to keep this over the moving bird, especially if it is moving fast. All points active makes it easier to track and stay focused.

To freeze motion completely you need really fast shutter speeds so good light will also help with this. If necessary use the maximum aperture your lens will allow, bump the ISO up to 200, or even 400 if you have to, and aim for a shutter speed of at least 1/1000th of a second, preferably much less than 1/1000 if the light allows it.

Birds flying directly towards you are easiest to pick up in the view finder, focus-lock and track, than birds flying across your line of vision. Slow flying birds, such as gulls are easier than fast flying birds such as swifts, so start with the easier subjects and move on to faster birds as your skills improve. Remember that pale birds against a pale sky my be underexposed by the cameras metering system, so you may need to increase exposure compensation by 1 or 2 stops. Read your cameras manual and make yourself familiar with how to activate/deactivate auto focus zones (on mine, it's simple to switch from the centre point to all points) and also familiarise yourself on how to adjust exposure for when it will be necessary.