birds in flight shutterspeeds with tamron 150-600mm

gaddypaid

Senior Member
Everyone has there own settings when it comes to birds in flight, but on my D5200 and tamron lens its quite high and result in high iso. I understand it depends on the day with the weather but on average to catch birds in trees its usually around the 1/2000 and 1/2500 for bif and iso struggles alot. If i drop down to about 1/1000 i get blur. I also shoot in manual and keep the aperature around f8 just wondered what speeds you guys use and hope you cope with iso issues.
Cheers Gaz....
 

SteveH

Senior Member
I don't take many BiF photos, maybe @mikew will pop in as he is the master! One point I would make, is that f8 over quite a long focal length could be too much - I would open up the aperture a bit and that will allow you to drop the ISO for a cleaner picture.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Sorry ime a bit late to the party,as Marilynne said go through the birds in flight thread and run your curser over the pictures to get an idea of shutter speed,remember though loads of them where taken in better light than we have.
I try normally to get about 1/1000 th and when i had the tamron i would happily use it wide open or f7.1 if i was short of light,i ended up using auto ISO which often stays low with those settings.
 
Sorry ime a bit late to the party,as Marilynne said go through the birds in flight thread and run your curser over the pictures to get an idea of shutter speed,remember though loads of them where taken in better light than we have.
I try normally to get about 1/1000 th and when i had the tamron i would happily use it wide open or f7.1 if i was short of light,i ended up using auto ISO which often stays low with those settings.

At 1/1000 don't you get movement in the wings? I started shooting BIF at 1/1600 and was still getting the wing tips blurred sink had to move up to 1/2000 to stop it. I guess it might have to do with the type of birds we are shooting.


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J-see

Senior Member
I mostly shoot BiF at 1/1600s. It depends a bit upon the type of bird, how fast it flies and how close I can get but about 90% of my shots are around 1/1600. For a DX sensor you might increase it more.
 
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Felisek

Senior Member
As J-see said, it depends on the bird. When I took pictures of puffins, I got a visible blur at wingtips even at 1/2000 s, just because they flap their wings so fast. I guess it must be very hard to freeze the wings of a hummingbird. On the other hand, for a gliding eagle 1/1000 s (or even longer) shouldn't be a problem.
 

gaddypaid

Senior Member
I usually try to get woodland birds finches, sparrows small birds that dont keep still for long before flying to the next tree. Sometimes when i can spot or get them buzzards and kestrels. I dont put my camera on auto iso it goes way to high british weather do always bright so i cap it at 1600 max and 100 min.
 

J-see

Senior Member
For me it needs to be a rather big bird with a slow wing slap before I can shoot at 1/1000s. A couple of days ago I shot a coot "running" across the water at 1/1250s and its wings tips and legs were blurred.
 

Kevin H

Senior Member
As J-see said, it depends on the bird. When I took pictures of puffins, I got a visible blur at wingtips even at 1/2000 s, just because they flap their wings so fast. I guess it must be very hard to freeze the wings of a hummingbird. On the other hand, for a gliding eagle 1/1000 s (or even longer) shouldn't be a problem.
Only way to freeze humming bird wings is with multiple flash set up
 

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
here was my attempt last time i tried.

7th June 2015 171.JPG


7th June 2015 182.JPG
 

Elliot87

Senior Member
I personally don't mind if the wing tips are blurred, so long as the head is nice and sharp I'm happy. If you have a bird with a characteristic fast wing beat, showing some motion blur helps to catch that character. That's just me though and if I have the light for a 1/2000sec shutter I'd take advantage of it.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Looking at your results as i did its my feeling you are losing pictures with the higher ISO as much as anything,each camera has a limit which is acceptable to individual owners,now i pretty much dont care how high mine goes, i have it on auto up to 4,000 when i had the D7000 it was 800 limit for me most of the time,with the D7100 it was 1600,your 5200 looks to not handle high ISO too well.
Like everything else there is a trade off,i would rather lose some images with too slow a shutter speed than get all of them with what for me would be excessive noise,i find that if you can track a bird for any distance and use continues shutter your chances are better,some one will come along and say noise can be dealt with in PP well they are right but not by me,maybe you can do it,lower ISO also helps results with cropping.
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
1/1000 in low light, 1/1600 or 1/2000 in good light. Usually f/7.1 or so. ISO only above 800 if it's dark enough to need it.

At 1/1000 you will normally get a good bit of wing blur, depending on where the wing is in the beat pattern.
 
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