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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mike D90" data-source="post: 265023" data-attributes="member: 17556">Ok.  I see a few things that you need to change.  But, I need to know if you are using the 1.4 converter on these?  That will change the amount of light you are getting and will affect things a bunch.Second, how close can you get to the birds?  Can you get set up within 10 feet of where they land?  If not your 200mm lens is not going to have enough reach.  With the teleconverter it helps but it cuts your light so much that it is hard to keep shutter speed up and aperture at f/8.Try this without the teleconverter.So try this.  Ditch the tripod and go hand held so you can keep the focus point squarely on the birds eye. Set Auto Focus Area to Single Point in the Auto Focus menu (as you already have it).  On the top dial set your AF mode to AF-S or AF-C. I like AF-C personally but I use back button focus.Set your camera to Aperture Priority and set it to f/8.Set shutter to 1/1000th second.Set Auto ISO to "On" and then go in and set it to allow maximum ISO of 1600 and set minimum allowed shutter speed to 1/1000th.  This will force the camera to change ISO before it changes shutter speed. You need to keep 1/1000th minimum to have sharp photos of small birds.  You need aperture of f/8 just to keep the whole birds body within sharp focus DOF.Find a bird that is close and is in good light without shadows on him at all.  Set focus point on his eye and gently release shutter.Let your ISO change to get the shot you need. Leave the shutter speed fast and aperture in the middle at f/6.7 or f/8.Just to give you an idea of how close you need to be to a small bird, this shot was taken with a 70-300mm VR lens. The bird was not more than 6 feet away from my lens and I had the lens almost zoomed max out.  It just fills the viewfinder.  You gotta get close or get more lens.[ATTACH=full]72737[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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