Back in PA after a rainy trip to Vermont, and I’m once more out at Fords Pond just before sunset, working with the birds. This latest session was the best yet; for the first time, I was able to place myself between the light (sun) and the critters, meaning that they were fully lit from the front. In each previous occasion, I was stuck trying to work with side or even back lighting, which contributed to both my frustration and lack of consistently good shots.
Not that I’m getting consistently good shots now… But I am getting better shots, and more of them. And I’m continuing to expand my knowledge base when it comes to this particular branch of photography. I spent a couple of afternoons reading articles on the Net, several of which presented me with information that I didn’t have before, and which has helped greatly.
Item #1 – aperture. In my previous work with birds, I kept the apertures as close to wide open as possible, for the benefit of faster shutter speeds. Shooting at f/2.8, f/4, and f/5.6 gave me more shooting time into twilight. But by twilight, the birds are settling down anyway, and with the loss of direct sunlight, f/4 or f/16, it doesn’t make much difference, because the shutter speed has fallen too low to handle. Enter the new information – shoot at f/8 or even f/11 if possible.
The benefits of this are immediately obvious. First off, most lenses are sharpest in this range, so quality improves immediately. Second off, there’s an increase in the depth of field. Due to telephoto compression effects, any background that’s a fair distance behind the subject is going to go soft, unless you’re shooting at some ridiculously small aperture, like f/22. So boosting to f/8 doesn’t impact the nice bokeh in the BG, but it does give enough DOF to actually get an entire bird in focus. And in good light, at a decent ISO – say 400 – there’s plenty of shutter speed left.
Item #2 – light. Specifically, Speedlite. My 430EX, now mounted onto the camera hotshoe and manually zoomed to its max, with the FEC dialed in at about -1. My reading tells me that bird feathers are practically made to reflect light is beautiful ways – this should have been obvious. The Speedlite, dialed down, provides just enough fill light to make the feathers pop, and smooth out any shadow areas. And, just as in portraiture, it adds a catch-light to the subject’s eye, which makes it look more alive in the image.
Item #3 – focus point. Although much of my reading suggests setting the focus point to the automatic setting, this is only going to work right when you’re tracking a bird against a blue sky. The rest of the time, my advice is to use the center point – it’s the most accurate, and the easiest in cases when the critter is sitting on a branch, with stuff in the BG. For me, this is the case most of the time.
I’ve come to another conclusion; the teleconverter is going to go bye-bye. My love/hate relationship with it has not improved, and frankly all it really represents is a $200 value if I can find someone desperate enough to buy it. The plan is to dump it and buy a Sigma 120-400mm OS lens, which has great reviews. It also has OS, which to me means a lot. OS is Sigma-ese for “optical stabilizer,” essentially the same thing as Canon’s IS system. Reports vary from the unlikely (hand-hold at 1/15″!) to the likely (gain two stops). Two stops is huge. Two stops is shooting at f/8 in conditions that should require f/4. Two stops is – should be – enough to overcome the fact that I have a hard time holding steady.
So, with that in mind, there’ll be a review in the works soon, for anyone out there who enjoys my rambling on about some lens or another.
