Birds in flight – Canon 400mm F5.6 gets the thumbs up!
Hi,
I am very pleased with some of my first light shots of “birds in flight” with our new Canon 400mm F5.6 lens. This lens requires a steady hand and good technique to get the best out of it; it is quite unforgiving of wobbly hands and low shutter speeds – as I have already discovered!
The Cormorant photos were taken with the 70-200 F4.
Thanks guys and thanks Alex for the “redirection” of praise, although that should really go to the engineers and opticians at Canon!
Its early days and I’m just getting to grips with some of the field techniques required to improve my keeper rate, as well as exploring the technical wizardry of the 40D.
I’m gradually getting a handle on the need open up 1˝ to 2 stops to compensate for the bright backgrounds, in an attempt to reveal sufficient detail in the underwing areas, but avoid blowing out the highlights. I’m shooting in Manual mode where I mainly set the aperture to wide open and select a shutter speed 1˝ to 2 stops over exposed. I tried spot metering but it was difficult to keep the spot on the bird so the meter was getting fooled by the bright sky.
In terms of auto focus, I think I read that the centre auto focus point on the 40D is more sensitive than the 8 outliers, so I’ve been trying to follow the bird in flight and keep the centre auto focus indicator somewhere on their body – not easy! I may try activating all 9 AF points and observe how they latch on to the bird, to see if that improves my keeper rate.
Next, I must remember to switch to either low speed or high speed continuous shooting mode so I can blast of several frames with one press of the shutter release, as these creatures just swoop by so quickly.
Then that brings us to processing where I have been experimenting with the Shadow/Highlight function in CS3, which helps fill in the dark shadows and tone down the bright highlights. I’ve noticed that this can leave a bright rim around the outline of the bird.
So much to explore, so much to learn, so much of nature’s stunning beauty to be seen. And that’s just in the day time – I must get the ‘scope out again and capture some night time photons soon!
Cheers
Dennis
PS – We had the 1st photo down as an immature Sea Eagle and the hovering bird a Nankeen Kestrel?
These shots are brilliant Dennis, absolutely lovely shots indeed.
Even though I've not tried this type of action shot yet, I can imagine how difficult it is to get right.
All the shots look very well processed on my monitor with fine detail and very nice colour renditions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
I’m gradually getting a handle on the need open up 1˝ to 2 stops to compensate for the bright backgrounds, in an attempt to reveal sufficient detail in the underwing areas, but avoid blowing out the highlights. I’m shooting in Manual mode where I mainly set the aperture to wide open and select a shutter speed 1˝ to 2 stops over exposed. I tried spot metering but it was difficult to keep the spot on the bird so the meter was getting fooled by the bright sky.
I remember reading that (at least in the older models, 12 bit) that 3/4's of the detail is contained in the second half of the histogram and hence the recommendation to always shoot to the right of the histogram to capture maximum detail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
Next, I must remember to switch to either low speed or high speed continuous shooting mode so I can blast of several frames with one press of the shutter release, as these creatures just swoop by so quickly.
That was going to be my next suggestion, especially on the 40D with it's 6.5 fps burst mode.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis
Then that brings us to processing where I have been experimenting with the Shadow/Highlight function in CS3, which helps fill in the dark shadows and tone down the bright highlights. I’ve noticed that this can leave a bright rim around the outline of the bird.
Another superb adjustment available in CS3 ACR is the "Recovery" adjustment, a simply brilliant addition to the ACR 'toolbox' which allows you to recover fine detail on RAW images before going into CS3 'proper'.
Also you can set preferences to allow you to edit jpgs using CS3 ACR too!
Thanks Andrew! I’ve just discovered the x3 Custom User settings so I’m going to work out the various optimum settings for bird in flight shots and then allocate them to a custom setting 1, so I can just rotate the Mode Dial to C1 and have the camera ready to go.
Also, I’ve just noticed that my colour space was set to sRGB and I’ve now set it to Adobe RGB as I noted that some of the shadows appear to be clipped in the sRGB colour space.
Sigh, so many settings, so much to digest and so much to put into practice!
Also, I’ve just noticed that my colour space was set to sRGB and I’ve now set it to Adobe RGB as I noted that some of the shadows appear to be clipped in the sRGB colour space.
That's the first setting I change on any new camera, setting it on Adobe RGB, even before I put the battery in.
.....Well maybe I put the battery in first......
I wondered do you use the Highlight Tone Priority function to give a bit more dynamic range in the highlight area?
cheers,
Rob
Thanks Robert. Although I’ve added that function to the 40D My Menu for quick access, I haven’t used it yet.
My thinking so far has been to try to zone in on the tones of the bird and most of the birds in flight I have attempted so far, have had mid to darker tones rather than the lighter tones, so I set the exposure manually; usually F5.6 and then a shutter speed of either 1/1250th, 1/1600th or 1/2000th second.
However, when taking photos of Egrets for example, I reckon that’s where Highlight Tone Priority should come into its own, as the tones are mostly in the highlights.
With the in-flight shots, keeping the shutter speed well up (to avoid blur) I typically have to pump the detail in the shadows and I understand that these can get compressed in the Highlight Tone Priority mode, making them noisy.
Its still early days for me in this exciting branch of nature photography, and it sure helps to have a wonderful wife who adores birds and is a keen bird watcher!
There is a large element of luck involved, on top of the amazing technology that has given us accurate and responsive auto focus, not to mention software tools such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, which all help to get the best out of each shot.
We were lucky enough to spend a few days at Tangalooma recently (got to hand feed the wild dolphins ) and a day down at Wynnum, and our fine feathered friends were gracious enough to fly in front of my lens!
when taking photos of Egrets for example, I reckon that’s where Highlight Tone Priority should come into its own, as the tones are mostly in the highlights.
Couldnt agree more. almost every shot I have of Egrets have no feather detail (or very little) due to the histogram clipping... Hard bird to photograph in my opinion... Im still working on it though... Theres a little lake about 500 - 600m walk from my house full of ducks and Egrets.. the occaisional sea eagle flys over also.. So I'm useing that as my "birds in flight" kindergarden...
I'd be stoked to get the detail you're getting out of your images..
its a sensational lens for the price isnt it! 
