Hello everyone. I am back after many days with a new camera. This time and finally its a DSLR Canon 600D (Rebel T3i in the United States). Believe me guys clicking the button on DSLR to click photos feels much better than clicking the button on a point and shoot. The physical shutter sound is much better than than the made up one in point and shoots.
Now, bird photography. I wrote an article about it quite early when I had a canon SX30IS which took quite descent photos. Check it out here and pardon me if I have some contradicting views now, coz I was a beginner in photography back then.
Now lets start with the equipment we would need for bird photography:
1.Good Tele photo lens. If you are serious about bird photography please move to a different website( ;-) ) , just kidding, but seriously I am not a pro photographer, just an enthusiast. Getting back, if you are serious about bird photography, a lens of minimum 500mm focal length is ideal (Trust me they are very very expensive, you can buy a new camera in that price). I use a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Lens, which kinda does a good job.
2.Now, what if you can't afford a 500mm lens but still want that focal length? You can buy something known as a Teleconverter. What is does? It simply doubles the focal length of any lens...now that's some thing cool. But hold on there's a downside to it, unfortunately is also doubles the aperture. So a 300mm f/4.0 lens becomes a 600mm f/8.0 lens. This would half the shutter speed i.e if the camera in AV mode originally at f/4.0 chose a shutter speed of 1/500 now it would choose 1/250 coz the aperture size has reduced. But still if light isn't a problem you could choose this option.
3. I personally don't like tripod's while photographing birds because it kinda affects your mobility. But if you are having a long lens then a monopod can be useful to handle the long lens.
That's it. and of course you need a location to shoot.
Let's have a look at the camera settings:
1. Shutter priority mode: If you want to capture the bird in flight, then the shutter speed should be at least 1/500 sec. So keep you camera in shutter priority mode and let the camera decide the exposure.
2. Shoot in RAW so that you can change the exposure later if you want to.
3. Position yourself such that the sun is behind you or the sun the facing the bird and not your camera.
4. If you shooting a still bird then use single point AF and focus on the eyes, for a bird in flight multi point AF- C.
That's it. Here are some photos which I took:
4. If you shooting a still bird then use single point AF and focus on the eyes, for a bird in flight multi point AF- C.
That's it. Here are some photos which I took:
No comments:
Post a Comment