Chelsea tell them about shutter speed the first thing you want to think about is your shutter speed you can start at about 1

Mm, and I like to either have my settings on shutter priority

so I can quickly switch shutter speeds or

Manual mode with auto ISO for the same reason because I know we're talking about shooting flying birds

But sometimes they perch and that can make a good shot too, so you'll start at 1 mm of a second

And that's usually good for any smooth flying bird not doing too much crazy movement once you get into a bird

That's smaller and diving like a Kingfisher

You might want to bump it up

You might also find that if you have a really high resolution camera it

Introduces more camera shake or motion blur so you might have to bump up the shutter speed for that too

But a little bit of trial and error goes a long way

Zoom in 1 to 1 to see if there's any kind of shake or blur and then if there is just up your shutter speed

a bit

a

Good feature to know how to use is exposure compensation you always want your subject to be the thing that is exposed

Properly, so if you have a very bright white bird

Let's say an Egret you want to put your exposure compensation

Down so that you're not blowing out the highlights and the feathers if your shootings

Said that the animal is backlit or the sky is very bright

You can also put your exposure compensation up so that your camera isn't exposing for the bright background instead of your subject you can

Experiment by taking pictures first and then exposing it up and down and see what works for you

You might want to take a moment while you're shooting to check your histogram make sure you're not clipping any highlights on your subject

Don't you decide to poop I

Find that the lighting on your subject can make or break your picture

I typically try to shoot with my back to the Sun so that my subject is lit up

But that doesn't always work out birds typically take off into the wind

And the Sun can be in a different direction

So you can't always have it perfect another thing is overcast days can kind of make your subject look soft

But I tend to just go out and shoot anyway. You never know what you're gonna get if you can choose perfect conditions

I love the golden hour, and I like to have to bat my back to the Sun

Right now. There's some really beautiful soft light on this Hawk, and he's looking right into it

And so we're getting some really nice pictures where his eyes are nice lately

when I shoot I tend to shoot raw plus JPEG and when I say that I mean I shoot raw to my faster card and

JPEG to my slower card raw is easier to bring out the details when you're editing and post

JPEG is a little more cemented, but there's still

You still have some ability to edit your picture or bring up the shadows bring down the highlights just not as drastically

I don't tend to have buffering camp problems with my camera

but I might run into that issue if

I'm getting really fast action like a bird diving for a fish if that's a problem for you

If you feel like you're missing shots because you're filling your buffer

Then you might want to consider switching to JPEG that will allow you to get more shots before your buffer is full

But like I said you might not be able to recover those shadows or highlights as easily

So you kind of have to decide for yourself?

Which works best for you?

Are you missing that crucial shot because your buffer is filling you can consider JPEG if it's just fine like me

shoot raw or raw plus JPEG

For my eye, so I'm pretty much always in auto ISO

And I know you're gonna get a lot of people saying they like to meter the scene once and then just use manual ISO

But I just haven't found that that works for me. I find that especially with flying birds

They might fly from full Sun into the shade and then your exposure will change drastically

And I know maybe you're super smart and super fast and you can do that while the bird is flying but for me

I'd rather let the camera do it because it can do it multiple times per second other things cannot change your

overall exposure that require me to use auto ISO like the Sun moving behind the cloud can change the

exposure by two four stops even on an overcast day where the lighting seems even

The Sun will move from patches of really thick clouds to thin clouds

And you might see the exposure changed by a full stop even on a clear day over the course of 15 minutes

The sun's usual path will change the exposure by maybe a third of a stop so for me

I've used an auto exposure all the time

Focusing is super important

All your settings don't matter at all if the bird is out of focus

so of course for a flying burger and continuous focusing mode for a bird that's flying against a

Cluttered background like they're flying against the background of the trees or the water

I use a single autofocus point and I do my very best to keep it on the bird

Now on the Nikon d5 and the nikon d 500 I find the 3d tracking

Works well enough that i'll use it to

attract the bird isn't moves across the frame on the da 50 and pretty much every other camera in the world I end up just

using a single

fixed

Autofocus point it is really hard to keep that focusing point on a bird with a big telephoto lens though especially when it's handheld it

Just takes practice now if the bird is against a clear sky

That's great news because I can just use all the autofocus points and that way as the Verdon meanders through the frame the camera is

Gonna track it and keep it in focus

I am a back button focused person we have a video on that if you aren't familiar

now some of the latest cameras like the Canon five years are the Canon 5d Mark for the D 500 D 5 D 850 and

the Sony 89 and the Sony a7r 3 they

Allow you to buttons that you can use for back button focus and I program one of them to do a single

Autofocus point and the other one to do all auto focus points that way if I'm tracking a flying bird

And it goes from a crowded background

Or I want the single autofocus point I'll hit the AF on button that does

Single autofocus point if it moves into the clear sky

I can make my life easier by hitting the other autofocus button and tracking all the autofocus points check our

Tutorials for detailed information on how to configure back button focus for your camera if this video helped you out you can subscribe down below

And also hit that notification bell. That's pretty crucial so that you know about our next video

You can also learn more about wildlife photography by checking out our book stunning digital photography specifically chapter 8

It's $9.99 for the e-book, and it comes with 14 hours of video. Thanks so much

Unbelievable

Tony

Tony I

Heard that the D 850 has 4k video. Did you read about that?

Would you recommend people buy that one

Tony do your puns make you think I'm low real birch

Son of a birch

Are you leaving me because of the pun are you leaving because of the puns bye