I’d like to start out by giving a big THANK YOU to Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber for the nice comments she made about my blog and bird photos on the MQResource site this week in the first edition of her Whistlestop Web Tour articles. In addition to being a quilter/stitcher, sewer, she also dyes fabric (which is gorgeous), has some great photos of birds, does some beautiful color studies, and posts a list every week of interesting things she finds on the web. AND she has a day job! I always look forward to reading her blog.
So today I thought I would talk a bit about how I take my bird pictures. As I have said before, I am the world’s laziest photographer. I don’t usually leave my house for bird pictures, and sometimes I don’t leave my chair. My Lumix DMC-FZ20 does a better job than my Canon PowerShot 1100, partly because of the zoom (up to 48 times) and partly because it has a better lens. I have been pleasantly surprised, though, by some of the photos I’ve taken with the Canon, and I think the colors tend to come out better with the Canon.
Shooting Through Glass: The key to my picture-taking is I happen to have a great crab apple tree right outside my kitchen window, and the birds like to stop by from time to time. We’ve also enticed them with a couple of feeders. It’s about six feet from my kitchen chair. A lot of times, I shoot between the blinds, but sometimes I get a little foggy-looking glare if I’m not careful about the angle of the camera in relation to the window. (Click here for yesterday’s picture and you will see the white-ish fog in the upper right-hand corner. Rats! But I like the picture anyway.) I also have trouble keeping horizons straight, but that’s for another Friday!
Auto-Focus Beam: Birds tend to get spooked by the focusing beam, and I get a lot of bird pictures that look like this:
And this is probably a good point to mention that I take a LOT of pictures. Hey, it’s not film. I pick out what I want, and then delete, delete, delete. When I go to the birding center in Port Aransas, TX, I will take 250 to 300 pictures in a very short time. Go back to the condo, delete…, and maybe end up with 25 worth keeping. Don’t be afraid to shoot a lot of pictures.
If I can (especially with the hummingbirds), I will do my half-squeeze pre-focusing on the top of the feeder, or anything that is very close to the same distance as the bird is from me. Then, holding the shutter button still half-way down, I lower the camera so the bird is in the picture and finish squeezing the shutter button to take the picture. (When you do this pre-focusing half-squeeze, you can move the camera to change what’s in your field of vision – up, down, right, left — but don’t change the distance between you and your subject.)
On some cameras, you can turn off the focusing beam (look for “AF Assist” in your camera menu, then turn it off); your picture may not be as spot-on in focus, but if you’re having trouble by chasing the birds away, it’s worth trying.
Burst Mode: This is a feature my Panasonic has/Canon doesn’t. It will be worth your while to figure out if you have this feature. The symbol is three rectangles overlapping each other, and you may have to check the dreaded manual to see if you have this. On the Panasonic, it’s a little button by the shutter.
What it does is I can hold down the shutter button and it will fire off up to four photos, boom-boom-boom-boom, depending on how long I hold the button down. I LOVE this feature for fast action shots, kids, and especially for birds. I’m sure you’ve noticed the delay between pressing the shutter button all the way down and the camera taking the picture. If you wait for that little bird to have the perfect pose, it will probably have flown away by the time you and the camera react and the picture gets taken. (It may be called something else on your camera. I would look up “continuous” and “multiple” as well.) Here is a composite showing four photos taken in the ”burst” mode:
That gives you a couple more settings to look for and get acquainted with this week. If you can’t find these settings on your camera (and all cameras won’t have them), then your assignment is to explore the modes available on your camera. My Panasonic has a dial to access them; the Canon 1100 has a “Func Set” button. That is where you will find different settings such as portrait, beach, sunset, etc. Check those out!
One more comment: If you have a rainy or cloudy day, don’t think that it’s not a good day for pictures. Sometimes pictures taken on sunny days are disappointing because there’s so much reflection, you don’t get the rich colors you think you should have gotten. Try taking some pictures on a cloudy day, or especially after a rain.
Feel free to post your pictures on Flickr! Show us the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if you have a problem, feel free to e-mail me through the “Contact Me” button at the top of my site. I may not know the answer, but I’m good at looking things up! We’ll work through it together.
Good Luck!
Sue
PS: If you’re new this week and would like to check out the previous posts on cameras/photography, go to “Categories” on the right side of this page and select “Photography”.
