Photographing a White Tailed Kite

I spend a lot of my time planning and positioning myself and the camera to get close to birds….close enough for the camera to reveal every detail. Most often however, the birds are not close. I shoot anyway, zoom-in as much as possible in post processing, and hope the atmospheric conditions are ripe for clarity.

I had my Canon 5D Mark IV, with a 300 2.8 L Lens and 1.4 extender when I took this photo of the White Tailed Kite. He was quite a distance from the camera, hovering….stationary in mid air….searching for rodents over the lowland scrub. I think the overall framing of this image is appealing. Distance and atmospheric conditions took their toll on image sharpness.

The 5D Mark IV has a fairly high pixel count (30.4 MP) and a full frame sensor. That means that given the right conditions, there are many more pixels to spread about. Zooming in on distant subjects should deliver better results than the 20+some MP dSLR cameras. However, extra megapixels do not help with clarity when there’s a haze in the air caused by ash, soot, and other debris. This is especially true if your subject is not close to the camera.

A Haze in the Air

We arrived in Carpinteria, CA shortly after the most destructive wildfire season to ever hit California (9,000 relentless wildfires, burning 1.2 million acres of land, destroying more than 10,800 structures and killing at least 46 people). We arrived one week before the flash floods and devastating mudslides that flowed down the Santa Ynez Mountains toward the Pacific and left massive misery and destruction in the Montecito area of Santa Barbara County.

The emotional and financial toll on the residents has been incalculable. As I write, a massive clean up effort to restore the area to some semblance of normalcy is ongoing. A thousand or more workers use dump trucks to remove thousands of cubic yards of mud, 10 yards at a time, from homes, businesses, and highways and then transport that slurry for dumping to various locations, including the ocean.

It’s been a long while since the air has been fresh and clear. Minute particles of soot, mud and other contaminants infiltrate our breathing tubes and coat every surface, inside and out. With these conditions, the air will remain gritty for some time.

Bird Photography On Hold

I don’t take the camera outside anymore. Inside our condo, I wipe down the surface of the camera and lens with a damp cloth. Even though the sensor and other electronics inside the camera and lens are somewhat protected, dust can still settle within. If I try to use it, the debris that has infiltrated everything around me will almost certainly impact camera operation and degrade image quality.

We head back to SW Michigan in a couple of days. When I get home, I will ship the camera and lens to the nearest Canon Factory Service Technician to restore the image sensor, mirror, focusing screen and other electronic components back to optimal operating condition. I miss using my camera, but it’s a very small sacrifice compared with the ongoing suffering all around us.

Photographing An American Kestrel

Some days, all I can manage on my photography adventures are shots of tail feathers and bellies.

We saw very few American Kestrels last year, though we visited all their usual open territory hangouts. Kestrels in the northern most range (like MI) migrate, so it’s always a joy to see them in the Spring. They usually perch on poles and utility lines near country roadways that give them a clear view of movement within the low lying vegetation. If I’m lucky and they are unconcerned with the camera, it’s a good opportunity to practice my birds-in-flight photography skills as they swoop down to pounce on insects and small rodents, then fly upward to their perch to feast.

NOTE: These little falcons are close to the size of Mourning Doves, a species that also likes to perch on utility lines. (I often have to look twice to ID them correctly.)

NOTE:  The nest box that we bought for Easter Screech Owls is also designated for cavity dwelling Kestrels. We knew when we erected the box that our wooded backyard would not be suitable for Falcons.

Depending on Readiness and Luck

Being lucky is oh-so-important in bird photography, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to be prepared. I was ready to photograph this falcon during her hunting ritual. (Low sun at my back, background not cluttered, fast bursting shutter, al servo focus, plenty of focus point sensors engaged, Gimbal tripod head set to efficiently track). The Kestrel’s perch was high- so much so that I had to dramatically tilt the lens upward and dip my knees in order to keep my eye on her in the viewfinder. I hoped that I could track her as she swooped down to pounce on a ground spider and then flew up again to her perch. Not surprisingly she was too suspicious of my behavior to indulge me.

Best capture I could manage was a clean belly shot showing off her lean and muscular underparts. I caught her right when she leaped from the light post. Her angle allowed the camera to catch a good view of her face, her fanned tail feathers and her splayed toes. She then banked her strong, lithe body and flew away in the opposite direction. (NOTE: Rufous streaking upon white on her underside indicates that this is a female Kestrel – males are white with black spotting.)

My neck ached from looking up so much. Feeling that my luck for the day was spent, I packed my gear and went home.

Photographing a Sharp Shinned Hawk

Baby it’s cold outside.

I’ve been inside the house with my camera, watching the year-round birds at the feeders and looking for behaviors that might indicate that a hawk was lurking nearby. These include eerie silence, no activity, and perhaps one or two Downy Woodpeckers clinging to a branch, still as death.

I spotted a Sharp Shinned Hawk obscured in the foliage of one of the tall arborvitaes (Northern White Cedar) on the property line. This perch was distant and too heavily obstructed for the lens to focus accurately. I only saw the concealed bird because another Sharpie rousted him from his hiding place. After a fast paced and aggressive chase, the dominant raptor finally managed to force the interloper out of her hunting territory .

Prepping for a Possible Encounter

Once I spotted the hawks, I opened a couple windows in the library (despite the wind, snow and intense cold), and maneuvered my rig into place. The scene was heavily clouded, so I attached the flash, hoping the fill light would enhance the color and sharpness of the images. After 30 bone chilling minutes, the Sharpie did fly in and perch on a nearby branch.

A Little Too Close

The perch upon which the Sharpie alighted was slightly above camera level, but too close for the 500mm lens to include all of the bird and leave a pleasant frame. Notice that in both images, the bottom parts of the splayed tail feathers are cut off.

During camera setup (when I am not rushed), I always try to position the lens so as to optimally frame whatever bird I hope to photograph that day. The goal is to visually balance the setting to include some context for the viewer.

I missed the mark. This was a large Sharpie (female raptors tend to be approximately 25% larger than males) and she was just too close to the lens to include a pleasant border.

Possible Remedies

There are strategies that I could have used to remedy the situation.

• Reorient the tripod collar to a vertical position. I did not do that because the tele flash on bracket and battery pack were attached (and necessary – ISO reading at 8000), so turning the tripod collar to a vertical position would have thrown off the trajectory of the light beam and possibly upset the weight balance of the gear.

• Move the whole tripod setup farther back into the library. Re-situating a large, heavily laden tripod only takes a minute to do, but it does cause a distraction. Birds don’t wait around for you, so I attempt that move only after I get in the first few shots. I was glad I did not take the time to move the gear because the Sharpie perched less than a minute.

(NOTE: I love the quality and precision of prime lenses, but for situations like this I wish I had a quality zoom lens. Canon makes a 200-400 F/4L zoom lens with a built-in 1.4x extender, giving the lens a range of 280-560mm (f/5.6) on my full frame DSLR. This means optimal versatility when out in the field photographing birds, especially in situations where it is difficult or unwise to move the camera or attach or detach an extender. (NOTE: One day I plan to rent this lens. It is ridiculously expensive to purchase…$10,999!)

Photographing Birds in Falling Snow

Snow flakes can float down gently or fall fast and furious. To capture them, you need to decide what look you want and adjust the exposure settings appropriately. The slower the shutter and the faster the snowfall, the more fog-like blurring and streaking you will see.

During this shoot, the snow looked picturesque (big, soft, feathery ice crystals) and fell  fast. I kept the telephoto flash on bracket turned on because heavy cloud cover darkened the scene and I needed some fill light to reach my preferred aperture and ISO. The shutter speed was set to the camera’s flash maximum sync speed of 1/250 second. The flash did a good job of illuminating the scene but flash will not freeze motion if there significant ambient light on the scene. In addition, the notoriously shallow depth of field on the 500mm lens was blurring the snowflakes in front of and behind the Sharpie.

End result: The camera captured a few snow flakes that look like round unattractive blotches. The flash illuminated the large snow flakes in the foreground, causing those splotches to stand out the most.

On-The-Job Training and Hindsight

Take-away from this shoot: Lots to things prepare for when photographing birds in the snow. I’m hoping that all this on-the-job training and hindsight will eventually translate into better bird photography.

(NOTE: Flash has been an essential tool to photograph birds this winter. Per our local weatherman’s blog (Bill Steffen), “….between Dec 1-18, 2016, SW Michigan had only 2 hours and 41 minutes of sunshine, or 8.9 minutes per day…. Jan 15  was only the 4th day since Nov. 29th with more than 45% of possible sunshine. Twenty-six of the last forty-five days have had zero sunshine…not even a minute.”)

Photographing a Sharp Shinned Hawk

I am sitting in the library behind the camera, working on my computer. Suspiciously quiet outside. I soon see why. A Sharp Shinned Hawk alights on a high branch above the deck. I point the lens up to capture him. Focus was immediate and I get one shot in before he notices me and flies away. I know before I preview it on the camera’s LCD screen that this will be a very disappointing image.

An Underexposed Silhouette

The exposure settings taken right before I moved the lens were based on the ambient light coming in from an open deck area with a woodsy background. The second I tilted the lens upward toward the sun to capture the image of the hawk, I no longer had an evenly spread distribution of light…. in fact, the light was substantially unbalanced.

Observations

• Light meters work by measuring the reflective light that passes through the lens. The camera’s internal light meter was in Evaluative mode— meaning it was set to analyze the light intensity of the entire frame. (NOTE: Evaluative mode is considered to be the most intelligent in-camera light metering mode.)

• The camera was in Manual Mode with E-TTL II set to auto. FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) was set at “0”.

• The intense background light dominated the E-TTL II light meter readings.  E-TTL II -working with Evaluative mode-metered the ambient light on the entire scene and did the calculations to determine how much (if any) flash would be needed. (NOTE: It doesn’t look like it, but according to the meta data, the flash did fire.)

• The ISO was manually set to ISO 1200 to reduce impact of flash and allow more ambient light to dominant what I thought was going to be a camera level, low lit scene.

• Four auto focus points were activated for this shot, all clustered around the hawk’s body. No help there. E-TTL II light meter algorithms no long figure in autofocus point exposure bias when calculating exposure.

Light Meter Algorithms

Complex light meter algorithms are designed to do countless calculations… comparing, weighing, averaging, determining distance from lens, figuring out what to ignore, and measuring tonality and brightness of the scene. Ack! So many different variables often make for unpredictable results, especially when the camera is set to meter in broad based evaluative mode, with flash.

Exposure Fine Tuning

Bird photographers often don’t have the luxury of time to fine tune manual exposure settings and take the test shots needed to compensate for unsightly back lighting.

I find myself wishing that the camera’s metering mode had been set to partial or even spot metering. This may have provoked less of a silhouette effect because the light metering calculations would have been limited to a smaller, more specific area…more metering on the bird instead of the background.

I usually take my chances with Evaluative Mode… let it calculate its best guesses, and then adjust from there. Sadly, for this shoot, there was not time nor opportunity to make adjustments.

Well, that’s the way it goes in bird photography.

NOTE:  November 30th is the last day for firearm deer hunting season in Michigan. That means I’ll be spending more time in the woods with my camera. I’m looking forward to some new birding adventures.

Trusting the Camera’s Autofocus

For a long time, I did not dare to venture into the confusing maze of menus that controls auto focusing on modern DSLR cameras. I was too comfortable with the Single Point AutoFocus, thus limiting the multi-point focusing functions of the camera and using only one, center based AF point. Keeping a moving bird’s head or body contained in just one focus point is not easy, especially if the bird is bouncing in and out of the frame and you are in the limited panning environment of a vehicle. I used single point autofocus so much because I felt I could trust my bird tracking and panning abilities more than the camera’s technology to react fast and lock focus on target. That’s a mistake in bird photography.

Auto Focus Compromised From the Start

For this shoot, autofocus was compromised from the start. The Northern Harrier was embraced within tightly packed brambles and grasses. His plumage blended well with the foreground and background – so much so that there was not a lot of contrasting color to separate the surroundings from the target and help the auto focusing mechanism lock focus. Worst of all, the bird was NOT anywhere near to filling the frame.

NOTE: The distance between the bird and the lens alone was enough for me to pass up the shot. However, this bird just happened to be a Northern Harrier, a handsome and unfamiliar raptor, so I had to go for it.

Check AutoFocus Settings

For a long time, I assumed that if the images I took looked decidedly out of focus, it was because I somehow mishandled the camera. I also wondered if perhaps my expensive 500mm lens needed to be re-calibrated or sent to Canon Service to bring it back to factory specifications. Auto focus can go wrong for a lot of reasons, both camera/lens related and user error, but one of the first things photographers should check is the autofocus settings within the camera menu system.

Different Focusing Scenarios

Canon DSLR cameras offer 6 different auto focusing choices. You must choose one option from the six (6) “case scenarios” that you think best fits the focusing challenges you will be faced with in the field. You then customize that one chosen scenario by deciding how intensely you want the following three (3) focusing functions to respond:  a) Tracking Sensitivity,  b) Accelerating and De-accelerating tracking; and c) Auto-Focus Point Auto Switching.

My Auto Focus Settings

I have set and re-set these functions many times on both my cameras. I have erred on the side of restricting the cameras too much for most of the bird photography challenges I encounter.

I have had the most success when my cameras are set to the Case #2 scenario. The Canon manual defines Case #2 Auto Focusing as:  “The camera will try to continue focusing the subject even if an obstacle enters the AF points or if the subject strays from the AF points. Effective when there may be an obstacle blocking the subject or when you do not want to focus the background.”

Once you match a case scenario to the conditions in the field, the camera’s auto focus system will be able to evaluate the scene and automatically adjust focus so much faster than the photographer can do manually.

Within the Case #2 Focusing Scenario, I have adjusted the “behaviors” of Case #2 as follows:

Tracking Sensitivity

As I track the bird in this mode, the tracking sensitivity is programmed to stay with the original subject (set at -1). Intruding obstacles (like blowing grasses, other birds, tree trunks, irate DNR officers) do not distract focusing from the primary target. (NOTE: If you do want the camera to track focus on anything that intervenes with your target, set it to +1 or +2 .)

Accelerating and De-Accelerating Tracking

It’s almost impossible to predict where, when and how fast the bird will fly off. I set the accelerating and de-accelerating tracking to immediately respond to the movement of the bird. Mine is set to -1.

Auto Focus Point Auto Switching

Having multiple points to help keep track of your subject is very advantageous. What is even better in fast and unpredictable situations is when the camera is programmed to follow the action and immediately switch as needed to activate the best auto focus points within the range of the viewfinder. Mine is set to +1

Activate Auto Focus Points

Once you engage the lightning fast, predictive auto focusing system that best fits your birding environment, don’t constrain it by setting the camera to use only one focusing point within the auto focus area selection options. You can be cautious and use the more limited zone focusing or let loose and activate the entire focus point system. (On Canon’s more modern cameras, 61 autofocus points are available.)

Then, once your autofocus settings match your bird photography scenario, it’s just a matter of watching and waiting; and hoping that the bird will take off sooner rather than later because of your aching back and neck.

NOTE:  Canon 5 D Mark III cameras allow you to quickly switch between Zone AF and 61 point automatic selection AF.  See this link and for more information.