Shooting Moving/Flying Subjects

I have been doing wildlife photography for a few years now and, although I've been able to get great shots, I have yet to figure out a way to shoot birds in flight or fast moving subjects. I read that the Shutter speed must be at least 1/1000....and I have done this but it leaves my images so dark that you cannot even decipher them. What am I doing wrong? I am using a Rebel XTI.

Hi Brandon

1/1000 is about right for birds in flight. There are two other elements to your exposure, aperture and ISO. If you set your camera to Tv (shutterspeed priority) it should set the correct aperture. You may need to compensate by increasing your ISO a stop or two. There should be a setting somewhere in you camera's menus to do that automatically also. On a bright day, you should not have trouble getting proper exposure of a flying bird using a shutter speed of 1/1000.

In fact, on a bright sunny day, you should be able to shoot at f5.6, 1/1000, ISO100, more or less.

Another problem may be that shooting against a bright or white sky, with automatic settings, your camera is stopping down to expose the sky as a mid tone, thereby underexposing your subject. Try exposing manually. I typically shoot BIF at about f8, 1/1200, ISO200 on a bright day. The great thing about digital is that you can see the expousure you're getting and make the necessary adjustments. Use your histogram. Adjust it untill the graph moves as far to the right as you can get it without tuching the right edge.

1/1000 of a second is a good place to start, if the light allows for it. Also, sometimes a little bit of blur in the wings isn't such a bad thing.

Okay, back to your question. I'm probably going to say too much, but humor me.

Exposure consists of three pieces, shutter speed, aperature and (effective) ISO. For birds in flight, depth of field isn't a huge issue, so you can get away with shooting wide open, or maybe stopped one stop.

Let's assume that your longest telephoto is f5.6 wide open. Under a sunny 16 rule, ISO 100, the best your shutter speed is going to be is 1/1000 of a second (I hope I counted that right). Under the brightest natural lighting conditions, 1/1000 is the best you can hope for for a correct exposure.

Realistically, though, you won't be shooting at sunny 16. It will be morning or evening, not 2 in the afternoon on a bright sunny day. In this case, you'll be losing 1-3 stops, or more, of light. Assume 2. You are now two stops underexposed. At this point in time, the image will be seriously underexposed.

To correct this, there are a couple of step you can take:

First, buy a faster lens and shoot it wide open. Unfortunately, little things like a budget, rent and food make this a tough option. We'll skip this one.

Second, boost the ISO. To retain the image at proper exposure, you'll need to increase the ISO two stops, to 100 --> 200 --> 400. I'd consider going to 800, to buy yourself so leeway in terms of aperature and changing light. ISO 800 is going to have some noise in it. Whether your camera will produce results at this ISO is up to you. For my 20D, I won't touch this ISO even for family snapshot. My 5D at 800 produces acceptable results for me, for non-critical usages (personal shots).

Last bring down the shutter speed. Depending on the shot, speed and what you are looking for in the image, 1/500 should work. Even 1/250 second for a slower bird suchas a raptor of some sort. I even have one show image shot at a 1/2 second. Granted, it is blurred but in a nice way.

So to correct the exposure: what camera settings and mode are you using? I'd probably try to reduce the speed to 1/250 second or so in shutter priority and boost the ISO to at least 400. Also, with birds in flight, a fast shutter speed goes far to covering youself for poor panning technique. Except for wings, everything should be sharp with good technique.

Buck knows bird photography better that I do. He's probably more correct on the shutter speed, especially for the smaller birds.

On soaring birds, like hawks and vultures, I've had good luck down to 1/250 sec, but they are also not moving at warbler speed at that point.

I'm with Buck, as long as the lighting is consistent. Manual exposure is a recipe for disaster on a partly cloudy day, but by far the best on a sunny or overcast day with steady light.

I set exposure by metering the sky in one of the automatic modes and then switching to manual to duplicate those settings. Then I overexpose from those settings one full stop and shoot the first BIF that comes along, checking my histogram right away after the burst to see if things look good. I'll adjust again at that point if I need to.

One thing that's frequently mentioned but has not been mentioned here yet, unless I missed it, is that as you pan with your subject, the subject often passes in front of a variety of backgrounds, and most auto metering modes will deliver different exposures because of those varying backgrounds, often over or underexposing the bird. Manual mode ignores all that stuff.

Steve's right. If the light changes when you're shooting in manual mode, you have to adjust the exposure manually. If the light is constant, manual exposure will keep the camera from changing the exposure as your background changes. This is especially improtant if your bird flies from a background of bright sky to one of dark trees. If your manual exposure is correct for the bird, the change of background will have no effect and your bird will be properly exposed, though a white sky may be quite bright and a dark forest may be nearly black. If your camera;s exposure mode is automatice, the exposure will change when the background changes from bight to dark, affecting the exposure on your bird. A dark bird against a bright sky will be underexposed; a white bird against a dark backgound will be overexposed.

I attached an example: The spoonbill had flown from an area of bright water into an area reflecting mangroves in shadow. The exposure was ISO400, f11, 1/1250, manual mode, in both photos. The aperture was set at f11 for a little extra depth of field for the flock. The exposure was correct for the birds in each photo even though the background changed a lot. Automatic exposure would have over-exposed the spoonbill against the dark water.

Good examples, Buck. A picture paints a thousand words, so in this case your pair is as good as 2,000.

Thank You all for the responses....I have written down many of your tips and I will be testing some out all tomorrow morning at a local duck pond, hopefully I manage to get at least one decent flying shot. Granted, I am using a Rebel XTI and I'm pretty sure it isn't as fast as, say, a 20d or 40d, but it gets the job done until I can afford to step up. Great shot Buck, I saw some Pink Spoonbills in flight down in the Pantanal a couple weeks ago, my guide told me they had migrated from the Everglades. I'll let you all know about my results tomorrow afternoon. Again- THANKS!

Brandon, I used an XT as a backup body for a couple of years, and it was able to do a good job on BIF. I was surprised, and happily so. I figure the XTi will be at least as good in Al servo, and maybe better.