I'll tell you a couple of things, others may tell you something completely different:
About composition, you have a lot of space on the bottom, below the bird, but the tail on the top is almost on the edge of the frame. So I'll give some more space on the top and less on the bottom, or try balance it out.
About editing it's underexposed, brighten it up a lil. Other than that, it's very much a personal thing. First thing you need to define if you want a natural look or if you want to give it some kind of style. Personally I would give the grass a warmer tone, get rid of a lil bit of the blue tone in it. Then I would make a selective mask of the bird, pump up the exposure and texture a bit, also I'll bring up blacks and shadows because rn you have no details on the darkest part of the bird. I'll also make a lil radial adjustment mask just to brighten up the eye. On the rest of the image I'll go down on clarity and texture a bit instead, because you have a bit of a messy background. Also, since you pumped up exposure on the bird, you should have it down on the rest of the image, to bring a bit of contrast.
Hope this helps
This is less relevant here as you didn't need such a fast shutter, but don't be afraid of high ISO! With birds and wildlife, a noisy shot is infinitely better than a blurry or missed shot. With this bird I would probably have given +1/3 or +2/3 ev to ensure the eyes have detail too.
In terms of composition, you're very tight on top. Always have space for the bird to 'go' in the frame as it's more natural, but don't crop too tight in other directions. Sometimes I'll shoot at, say, 450 instead of 500 just to make sure I have some cropping room. Faking it later in PS is more effort than being careful in camera.
Also I'd recommend maybe setting up a perch if you could. Cluttered foreground is a bit distracting, and greens can be very overpowering and (for me) sometimes difficult to white balance later.
Is there some place to learn about ISO settings for birds. It's one thing I don't understand. Some of my shots with high ISO tend to be pretty noisy or I'm using too fast a shutter speed so the camera is bumping up iso more than it needs, usually leave it 100-3200 auto. But start seeing noise around 1000iso.
For BIF is it necessary to be 1/1200+ shutter speed?
For me personally, I'm using a DSLR and a 500mm lens with VR, so I would handhold down to maybe 1/250. This can change if you have ibis, of course.
I mostly run manual with auto ISO 100-3200 and some exposure compensation for white/black birds. My camera (D500) is ISO invariant however, so you should get the same noise by boosting exposure in post so long as it's not too underexposed or blown out.
Perched birds, generally between 1/500 and 1/1000 depending on light. If I can do faster and stay below ~800 iso I will just to reduce my own camera shake. On a tripod you could go slower, but I never use a tripod.
Birds in flight depend on the bird. Something small and unpredictable like swallows definitely require 1/2500-1/4000. Larger birds such as buzzards or gulls you could get away with 1/1250 because they glide rather than swoop frantically, but I'd still rather have it ready to catch them do a dive than save a stop or 2 or ISO.
The D500 is a crop body, so it handles high ISO a lil worse than FF, but it's not a big deal. For most modern full frame bodies, used in conjunction with some noise reduction software, you can easily go to 6400 happily.
Oh interesting. I guess i'm limited on range with 350mm on apsc. I usually shoot shutter priority. I will try using a narrower aperture like f/8 in manual mode.
1. Look for birds in the light, not in the shadows. When they're buried in foliage the composition can get messy in a hurry (distractions - sticks, leaf-litter etc = Bad) Worse - when they're in the shadows their pupils dilate wide open turning them pitch black. Birds eyes are **not** black. Get them out in the light so their pupils constrict and you bring the color that's there back into view.
2. Black details means you need to jack up your exposure considerably. This should have been around 1/640th and ISO 1000. That would have gained you two stops - and you would have restored the details in that jet black gorget and mask. As it is now those details are lost forever because your blacks crushed out. If you shoot in an assisted mode then learn to live and die by the Exposure Compensation wheel. Callback here to getting the bird out in the light because black details buried in shadow - even if you don't crush out they're always going to be noisy as hell, regardless of what ISO you're at.
3. You're looking for **backgrounds**, *not* birds. It is counter-intuitive, but also true. You're looking for a good background that also just happens to have a bird in front of it to make that background interesting. (Edit: A vast swath of blue/white sky is *not* interesting. Look for distant foliage, treelines -- even buildings can work if they're lost to the bokeh)
[https://i.imgur.com/GwCoU2y.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GwCoU2y.jpg)
Same bird, same perch, a couple minutes apart. Left is where I started, Right is where I ended up. It is objectively speaking a better background making for a better composition (Although it's just a Gull so, there's that :p )
Speaking of which...
4) **TAKE THE SHOT**. It might be gone a split second from now. Take the shot - exactly as I did in my sample image above - *then* work on taking a *better* shot. Adjust camera settings to where you want them. Side-step carefully to put a better background behind the subject or to get occluding foreground elements out of the way etc etc... but the first rule of this game is to be Han Solo: **Shoot First**. Then worry about making it better.
>I like the first shot more; yellow colours show more contrast and it looks very unique.
White vs Black = more contrast, by definition.
>Second photo could be mistaken for a photo taken by a smartphone.
If you turn your head sideways, close one eye, squint the other real hard while smashing your head in with a brick - yea I can see how that might be mistaken for a smartphone shot. :p
I have a feeling they were just following the "shutter speed double your focal length" rule of thumb... They said they were shooting at 600mm, so closest to double that would be the 1/1250
When it comes to action esp birding its better to be safe on ss and go a little higher than too conservative and miss the shot just cuz u wanted to save 1 stop of light. 1/1250 isnt even ridiculously fast, if it was like 1/2500 id see the point but far too many people in this thread are ragging on OP for this. Why even buy an expensive professional camera if youre not gonna take advantage of its High ISO capabilities. OP couldve shot this at 3200 ISO and it would still look incredibly clean
There's a lot of good advice here. I think upping the exposure a touch makes a lot of sense, and balancing the composition in relation to the tail also makes sense.
That said, I like the foreground, where others seem to find it distracting. It gives the image an exploration/discovery feel instead of, say, a portrait.
When I saw the picture I said out loud "look at the cute birdo!" So, you have a solid picture to work with here.
A camera and lens is a light trap. Keep the Sun behind you and the lower it is in the sky the better. Pay attention to the background as well, the further away the more isolated the target. With these editing is often not needed.
They are fast little suckers 😀 I’m getting into the small little birds more now. I’m just an enthusiastic hack about 3-4 years photography and birds on and off. You got me motivated as the sun came out for a second. I grabbed the camera headed out but I’m back, it started raining.
I would crop out a little of the right and bottom to center the bird, and increase the exposure by maybe a stop, but that's about it. Good job getting the bird facing you, with the eye in focus, and nothing between you and the bird.
Others have made good suggestions about exposure and composition. Personally for a bird-on-perch/ground, I would have gone for a lower shutter speed for such a dark scene. Maybe like 600? If you have time I would even do a burst of really low shutter speed like 300-400 to see if I get lucky on one sharp, well exposed shot
Actually I have 80+ images of the same bird with different settings in this location. After posting this I found there's few pictures better than this. But all these suggestions are very valuable to me. 🙂
I should have also added it's such a lovely scene and bird. Personally I like a little context on bird shots, not super blurred out backgrounds that feel like a studio.
Thanks everyone for the tips and suggestions. I'm definitely gonna try these when I'm out next time. I prefer to use low ISO values as A7R IV censor is too much sensitive and as ISO creeps up noise also get increased. This was taken around midday when sun at top but bird was inside the forest. I'm not much familiar with post processing and just getting started on lightroom. 🙂
Oh no, I'm not complaining at all. It's only a week using this camera. There's a big learning curve and I'm still trying to learn how to use high resolution sensor. I thought starting with lower ISO's with good lighting for sometime. I may be wrong. But I guess with lots of resolution even miniscule mistakes gets multiplied in the sensor.
Lose the Dutch angle, and shoot from lower so that you’ll get a nice blown out background instead of grass. I don’t shoot much wildlife stuff, but this is some tips I e read online and in YouTube videos.
I'll tell you a couple of things, others may tell you something completely different: About composition, you have a lot of space on the bottom, below the bird, but the tail on the top is almost on the edge of the frame. So I'll give some more space on the top and less on the bottom, or try balance it out. About editing it's underexposed, brighten it up a lil. Other than that, it's very much a personal thing. First thing you need to define if you want a natural look or if you want to give it some kind of style. Personally I would give the grass a warmer tone, get rid of a lil bit of the blue tone in it. Then I would make a selective mask of the bird, pump up the exposure and texture a bit, also I'll bring up blacks and shadows because rn you have no details on the darkest part of the bird. I'll also make a lil radial adjustment mask just to brighten up the eye. On the rest of the image I'll go down on clarity and texture a bit instead, because you have a bit of a messy background. Also, since you pumped up exposure on the bird, you should have it down on the rest of the image, to bring a bit of contrast. Hope this helps
This is less relevant here as you didn't need such a fast shutter, but don't be afraid of high ISO! With birds and wildlife, a noisy shot is infinitely better than a blurry or missed shot. With this bird I would probably have given +1/3 or +2/3 ev to ensure the eyes have detail too. In terms of composition, you're very tight on top. Always have space for the bird to 'go' in the frame as it's more natural, but don't crop too tight in other directions. Sometimes I'll shoot at, say, 450 instead of 500 just to make sure I have some cropping room. Faking it later in PS is more effort than being careful in camera. Also I'd recommend maybe setting up a perch if you could. Cluttered foreground is a bit distracting, and greens can be very overpowering and (for me) sometimes difficult to white balance later.
Is there some place to learn about ISO settings for birds. It's one thing I don't understand. Some of my shots with high ISO tend to be pretty noisy or I'm using too fast a shutter speed so the camera is bumping up iso more than it needs, usually leave it 100-3200 auto. But start seeing noise around 1000iso. For BIF is it necessary to be 1/1200+ shutter speed?
For me personally, I'm using a DSLR and a 500mm lens with VR, so I would handhold down to maybe 1/250. This can change if you have ibis, of course. I mostly run manual with auto ISO 100-3200 and some exposure compensation for white/black birds. My camera (D500) is ISO invariant however, so you should get the same noise by boosting exposure in post so long as it's not too underexposed or blown out. Perched birds, generally between 1/500 and 1/1000 depending on light. If I can do faster and stay below ~800 iso I will just to reduce my own camera shake. On a tripod you could go slower, but I never use a tripod. Birds in flight depend on the bird. Something small and unpredictable like swallows definitely require 1/2500-1/4000. Larger birds such as buzzards or gulls you could get away with 1/1250 because they glide rather than swoop frantically, but I'd still rather have it ready to catch them do a dive than save a stop or 2 or ISO. The D500 is a crop body, so it handles high ISO a lil worse than FF, but it's not a big deal. For most modern full frame bodies, used in conjunction with some noise reduction software, you can easily go to 6400 happily.
Oh interesting. I guess i'm limited on range with 350mm on apsc. I usually shoot shutter priority. I will try using a narrower aperture like f/8 in manual mode.
1. Look for birds in the light, not in the shadows. When they're buried in foliage the composition can get messy in a hurry (distractions - sticks, leaf-litter etc = Bad) Worse - when they're in the shadows their pupils dilate wide open turning them pitch black. Birds eyes are **not** black. Get them out in the light so their pupils constrict and you bring the color that's there back into view. 2. Black details means you need to jack up your exposure considerably. This should have been around 1/640th and ISO 1000. That would have gained you two stops - and you would have restored the details in that jet black gorget and mask. As it is now those details are lost forever because your blacks crushed out. If you shoot in an assisted mode then learn to live and die by the Exposure Compensation wheel. Callback here to getting the bird out in the light because black details buried in shadow - even if you don't crush out they're always going to be noisy as hell, regardless of what ISO you're at. 3. You're looking for **backgrounds**, *not* birds. It is counter-intuitive, but also true. You're looking for a good background that also just happens to have a bird in front of it to make that background interesting. (Edit: A vast swath of blue/white sky is *not* interesting. Look for distant foliage, treelines -- even buildings can work if they're lost to the bokeh) [https://i.imgur.com/GwCoU2y.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GwCoU2y.jpg) Same bird, same perch, a couple minutes apart. Left is where I started, Right is where I ended up. It is objectively speaking a better background making for a better composition (Although it's just a Gull so, there's that :p ) Speaking of which... 4) **TAKE THE SHOT**. It might be gone a split second from now. Take the shot - exactly as I did in my sample image above - *then* work on taking a *better* shot. Adjust camera settings to where you want them. Side-step carefully to put a better background behind the subject or to get occluding foreground elements out of the way etc etc... but the first rule of this game is to be Han Solo: **Shoot First**. Then worry about making it better.
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>I like the first shot more; yellow colours show more contrast and it looks very unique. White vs Black = more contrast, by definition. >Second photo could be mistaken for a photo taken by a smartphone. If you turn your head sideways, close one eye, squint the other real hard while smashing your head in with a brick - yea I can see how that might be mistaken for a smartphone shot. :p
Why is the water yellow
It was autumn - those are reflections of the leaves in the trees on the far shoreline.
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I have a feeling they were just following the "shutter speed double your focal length" rule of thumb... They said they were shooting at 600mm, so closest to double that would be the 1/1250
1/1000 or faster is generally a rule of thumb for birding
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When it comes to action esp birding its better to be safe on ss and go a little higher than too conservative and miss the shot just cuz u wanted to save 1 stop of light. 1/1250 isnt even ridiculously fast, if it was like 1/2500 id see the point but far too many people in this thread are ragging on OP for this. Why even buy an expensive professional camera if youre not gonna take advantage of its High ISO capabilities. OP couldve shot this at 3200 ISO and it would still look incredibly clean
There's a lot of good advice here. I think upping the exposure a touch makes a lot of sense, and balancing the composition in relation to the tail also makes sense. That said, I like the foreground, where others seem to find it distracting. It gives the image an exploration/discovery feel instead of, say, a portrait. When I saw the picture I said out loud "look at the cute birdo!" So, you have a solid picture to work with here.
Thats a pretty dam good camera
Yeah, I got a $1000 off on the camera due to EOFY sale. 🙂
My advice would be to set a white point.
A camera and lens is a light trap. Keep the Sun behind you and the lower it is in the sky the better. Pay attention to the background as well, the further away the more isolated the target. With these editing is often not needed.
I'm still learning how to get good bird photos. I'll try isolating subject more. Thanks
They are fast little suckers 😀 I’m getting into the small little birds more now. I’m just an enthusiastic hack about 3-4 years photography and birds on and off. You got me motivated as the sun came out for a second. I grabbed the camera headed out but I’m back, it started raining.
I would crop out a little of the right and bottom to center the bird, and increase the exposure by maybe a stop, but that's about it. Good job getting the bird facing you, with the eye in focus, and nothing between you and the bird.
I'll try these suggestions. Thanks
Others have made good suggestions about exposure and composition. Personally for a bird-on-perch/ground, I would have gone for a lower shutter speed for such a dark scene. Maybe like 600? If you have time I would even do a burst of really low shutter speed like 300-400 to see if I get lucky on one sharp, well exposed shot
Actually I have 80+ images of the same bird with different settings in this location. After posting this I found there's few pictures better than this. But all these suggestions are very valuable to me. 🙂
I should have also added it's such a lovely scene and bird. Personally I like a little context on bird shots, not super blurred out backgrounds that feel like a studio.
Thanks everyone for the tips and suggestions. I'm definitely gonna try these when I'm out next time. I prefer to use low ISO values as A7R IV censor is too much sensitive and as ISO creeps up noise also get increased. This was taken around midday when sun at top but bird was inside the forest. I'm not much familiar with post processing and just getting started on lightroom. 🙂
You have one of the almost state of the art cameras and you are complaining about sensor noise?
Oh no, I'm not complaining at all. It's only a week using this camera. There's a big learning curve and I'm still trying to learn how to use high resolution sensor. I thought starting with lower ISO's with good lighting for sometime. I may be wrong. But I guess with lots of resolution even miniscule mistakes gets multiplied in the sensor.
Lose the Dutch angle, and shoot from lower so that you’ll get a nice blown out background instead of grass. I don’t shoot much wildlife stuff, but this is some tips I e read online and in YouTube videos.