flight photography tips

Since joining NPN a couple of weeks ago I have seen so many outstanding flight/action shots of birds. These are photos I desire to take but find that I am never in the right place at the right time. Is it best to find a good spot and lay low or to move around and hope something flies by? I am shooting with a 300 f/4L IS with or without a 1.4x. Should I be using a higher ISO and fill flash? Thanks for any feedback.

Hi David, I am typically standing and shooting handheld when I take my flight shots, so I wouldn't say I am laying low. I would say try to go to a place where there are a lot of birds. Good places to start to work on your flight photography are city park ponds where there are a lot of waterfowl that are somewhat used to human presence. If you live on the coast, any place where gulls and terns congregate can be a good place to practice. With a 30D, I think you should typically set your iso to 400 for flight shots and shoot either wide open or up to one stop closed down from wide open, F4 to F5.6 without the TC, F5.6 to F8 with the TC. Shooting close to wide open at this iso should keep your shutter speed up as long as there's a fair amount of light. Shooting with a fast shutter speed is one of the big keys to getting sharp flight images IMO. Additionally you should set your camera to A1 Servo and have the center auto focus point activated. I would start out using AV priority mode and after you have some success with that, start using manual exposure modes. If you are going out prepared to try to get flight images (having the settings listed here) as opposed to just trying to get the occasional flight image while you are taking other photographs you will have a lot more success. For more info you should read Alfred Forns and Fabiola de Alcazar's article on flight photography in one of the recent NPN online magazines. Good luck.

Is it impossible to get the flying object in focus as well as the stationary object that is in back of it? I was just thinking of going to a old aerodrome to photograph biplanes and would like to get the hangers as the planes fly by.

Donald, you could use a wide or a semi wide angle lens and use an aperture of +- f/16, however you will need lots of light and or a high iso to get the shutterspeed required to freeze the flying objects.

David
Nates advice is excellent. I would also say that you should be sure to use mode 2 IS for panning shots, or try no IS at all to pan because it AF focuses faster and also use continuous shooting mode and shoot many shots in bursts.
Rick T

So I should only activeate the center AF point instead of all nine? I usually have everything set as Nate said. It just seems that I am never in the right spot. I will takes Nate's advice and go to the local park to practice. What is the difference between Mode 1 and 2 IS on my 300 f/4L IS?

Mode 1 is an IS for handholding more or less stationary subjects, or should I say subjects that are not moving quickly in a direction, or in lower light with slow shutter speeds. Mode 2 is used for panning shots and will correct in 2 directions only. This means that when you are using a strong movement from one side to another the lense will correct for unwanted up and down movements. Ideal for bird tracking or raceing cars etc.
On a nice clean BG all nine focus work well but can catch on all sorts of extraneous objects if your subject is flying in front of a mixed BG. Just when you think you are going to get a nice shot of a landing goose the camera catches a piece of grass and fusses (is that a verb?) your goose...so to speak.

Rick T