articles/Nature/birdsinthegarden-page7

Photographing Birds in the Garden - part 7 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

by Jon Ashton Published 01/04/2012

As mentioned previously, fairly direct light, but slightly diffused, would be optimal for bringing out plumage detail. For 95% of the time I try to ensure that I focus on the bird's eye or cheek. If the eye is not sharp then you can pretty well consider disposing of the image. I try to use the slowest ISO that would permit 1/320 sec (or faster), then I consider aperture secondarily to shutter speed. It is good to get a sharp image with relatively small depth of field compared to a blurred image with good depth of field.

It is not very often that we actually see birds, close up, for long enough to simultaneously appreciate the full detail from bill to tail, so the human eye is capable of accepting less than full focus on all parts of the bird. That said, in general, the more there is in focus, the better.

Choice of AF point in the camera is a personal issue, I generally use the top central point as this offers good compositional choice, you may prefer to use a different point. Alternatively you may set your camera to use a combination or cluster - this is fine provided you cover the all-important eye of the bird. Another approach is to use 'focus lock and recompose' - though this can be frustrating with small birds as they are usually moving, rather than remaining static. For this reason I prefer to use servo-focus as opposed to single-shot focus - even though the bird may be perched in one place, the head is always moving slightly.

The Images
This may sound a little obvious but I will mention it because I have been caught out several times - check your camera settings. On prosumer Canon models it is so easy to knock the dial - you may think you left the camera on AV mode when in fact it is not. I was once puzzled for a few minutes when I wanted to capture a shot of a lesser redpoll - it would have been a 'lifer' at the time and I missed the shot. My camera was in fact set on one of the custom modes and when I looked in the viewfinder I thought I was on Av and auto focus. I pressed the shutter and nothing happened; also the camera kept resetting the ISO and it took me a few moments to work out what was going on.

The lesson here is to have a small torch (I now have a tiny one on my key ring) and look at the camera dials and don't just look at the LED screen because you can be easily misled.

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