Bird at rest ?

[Cutter]

Ok one more question related to bird photography (I think) If the bird (small) is perched on a fence you have your camera at say max focal distance of 400m on a tripod, What would be a reasonable shutter speed to aviod blurr and what Fstop for DOF . the bird is 15 mts away.

I am caught between trying not to allow it to blur, yet get the right exposure.
I tried today with a 800 shutter speed 400m focal at F5.6 but had to whack the iso up to over 1000 to 2000 Hence lots of noise

Cheers

[bsmith]

Hi Cutter, I like taking bird shots too, if its at rest you don't have to use an 800th sec, depending on the sturdieness of your tripod you would get away with a 60th or less if its trully still and you have a good tripod, you would still have to be carefull pressing the shutter using your 400mm lens, if you don't have a cable release with you, you can quickly turn to self timer and let the camera take the shot. Wild life is so upredictable a cable release is the quicker and more dependable method, but I'm sure you know that

Bob

[ianpinion]

Whe you say you want to avoid blur, do you mean blurring by movement of the subject or camera shake? If the bird is sitting still with it's wings folded then you won't need a very high shutter speed, but if the wings are flapping you could need as much as 1/4000th of a second to freeze the action completely. For that, you're going to need strong light and a highly light sensitive sensor at f/5.6 to be able to correctly expose the shot. If you under-expose it you will get a lot of noise in the shadowy areas, otherwise your picture may look more grainy when correctly exposed but there shouldn't be that much noise with your camera.

If you're are shooting with a really fast shutter speed you'll need to have the aperture wide open which will give you a DoF of approximately 25cm at f/5.6, which should be enough for a small bird.

[cosmicma]

if you havn't got a cable release get one especially for tripod use or just resting the camera on a bean bag there's no need to touch the camera avoiding even the lightest camera shake
i use a bean bag all the time and a wired remote shutter release and have good steady shots at less than 100th of a second at 400mm f5.6

example taken at 398mm f5.6 1/50th sec iso 200


i can't remember if i used a tripod or a bean bag for this shot but the remote shutter release allows me to get quite steady shots at low shutter speeds

i try to keep the shutter speed above 200th second and the iso as low as i can get away with but unless you have fast glass ( i havn't ) it's not allways possible anything that can aid your photography has got to be a bonus and a cable release has got to be one of the most invaluable things you will buy

another example taken at 453mm f6.3 1/60th sec iso 320


this was taken at 328mm 1/13th sec f6.3 but i think thats pushing it a bit


bit of a long winded post but i hope some of this helps in some way

[Cutter]

Hi Guys thanks for your input, and yes all you are saying is right my shutter speed can be dropped as long as I have a remote release this will also allow me to drop my 2000 iso (am I a thicko or what!) have attached my robin so you can see how bad I am . But I think I am getting there!!. Please dont hold back on your opinions regarding my effort.

Ps off to buy my REMOTE RELEASE NOW

http://www.photoradar.com/files/imag.../robintest.jpg

[RyanB]

That would be a good pic if it didn't have so much noise. Its well composed and seems to convey the Robins charcter rather well.

p.s Using meal worms is cheating!!!! haha

[Cutter]

Originally Posted by RyanB

That would be a good pic if it didn't have so much noise. Its well composed and seems to convey the Robins charcter rather well.

p.s Using meal worms is cheating!!!! haha

Thanks RyanB . Having read the above comments I have taken another shot of the robin today, without having such a high shutter speed (see link below) which has reduced the noise because the iso was only 200 instead of 2000. I used live veiw to lockup the mirror and a 2sec timer to stop camera shake.
just bought my remote release so I hope to get better now I know how much shake there is on the camera because of shutter pressing and weak tripods.

AS regarding the meal worms its the only way to get it to fly to my camera point. ps Could Have Cropped them out then I would Have been cheating LOL

Thanks for your comments

http://www.photoradar.com/files/imag...trobincrop.jpg

[cosmicma]

your getting there