Achieving Clear Eye Focus on Primarily Black Birds

I'm having trouble achieving clear eye focus on primarly black birds or birds with black eye areas.

Does anyone have any tips that might help?

Laurie

Hi Laurie, shooting birds against a bright sky in auto exposure will probably cause under exposure so that the darks or blacks will lack much detail & that includes eyes. Unless you are shooting closeups in a controlled area it will be difficult to selective focus. At some distance the whole bird, which is small compared to the whole scene, would either be in-focus or out.

Sometimes the sun will create a catchlight in a birds eye. I think that a catchlight because of the contrast, helps the camera focus. Since you can't dictate the direction of the bird or the sun, get & use a flash with a fresnel extender for daytime catchlights or afterdark illumination in wildlife - I forgot the name of mine I bought through this site. In daylight, you may run your flash on low output so you won't blast out the details - you only need enough of a 'pop' to reflect in the eyes. This can be a good technique for shooting many living things. And in portraits, put life in the eyes shaded by brows.

If you have otherwise good photos of birds you can paste in some detail. Copy & paste the same eyes on a new layer, brighten & sharpen & then erase everything except the eye itself. Adjust the density of the new layer over the eye. This will possibly be enough improvement. Or, look for some good catchlights & details in eyes in other pics - copy & paste the layer over the eye. Both eyes need the same degree & angle of catchlight & eye detail. Just erase everything that doesn't look natural.

Reducing camera shake & Image Stabilization helps a lot in capturing razor sharp details.

I am looking forward to comments of others giving input into the 'eye' solutions.

Pat Warfield
Cleo Springs, Ok

I think the biggest thing here is to have the sun behind, but not directly behind, you. If you can achieve that kind of an angle, you'll get the catch light.

Another thing that I've found very helpful for shooting non-white birds in flight is - pump up your exposure compensation to reveal the details in the feathers. This is a trial-and-error thing, but you should be able to increase the comp at least 1 whole stop (three-thirds, so to speak), and frequently 2 whole stops.

Let us know how you make out, Laurie.

I initially spoke about catchlights, but then I reread your question and you're asking about sharp focusing, not about catchlights.

So, another couple of things: Set your AF point selection to the center point. Shoot in Av mode at F8. F8 will give you more focusing leeway than a wide open Fstop.