As you've seen from the articles posted here, we are friends to the wildlife around us.
In fact, we are friends of alpine! So, here's another article to enhance your birdwatching. We may be lucky enough to get as good as Dennis & Ronnie with their eagle pics!


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo Tips: Photographing Birds in Flight


Birds are beautiful. No doubt about it, a good photograph of a bird is beautiful too. Some may joke that the beauty of a bird makes a photographer look talented, but photographing birds is no easy task. A picture of a bird in "flat" light may fail to convey anything interesting about the bird at all, and a picture lacking clear focus may leave the viewer frustrated. Many of the best photographs of birds have captured intense moments where action is apparent everywhere in the picture and the bird's personality shines from crisp focus on the eye and on the feather details. Perhaps the most captivating thing about a bird's personality is the fact that birds enjoy the freedom of flight. Putting that freedom on film is a great challenge!

Location
To increase your odds of capturing the thrill of flight, head out to a great migratory stopover where birds are abundant and active. Check with your local department of natural resources to find the best stopovers close to your home or cabin. Starting early is important as the best light and the most action will probably occur in the early hours of the day.

Lens Choice
You will probably need 400 to 600 millimeters in your lens, but you can get great migration photos showing birds in beautiful habitats if you have a shorter lens. Many photographers use tripods with elaborate, flexible camera mounts to support giant lenses. These lenses are very effective but also very expensive. Shooting from a tripod tends to limit your mobility and flexibility when the action is fast and changing faster. For my images of birds in flight, I use a fixed focal length lens with image stabilization (Canon's 300 IS) and a 1.4 X teleconverter with professional, fluorite glass. My focal length is 420mm with film, but, due to a 1.6X digital conversion, 672mm when I shoot digital images. The smaller lens and the image stabilization allow me to hand-hold my camera while following the flight, keeping me mobile and on top of the action.

Focusing
If your eyes are clear and your vision is sharp, you may try your skills at manually focusing the lens. This makes you a flight-shooting athlete and will keep your adrenaline running high. Effective manual focus is best achieved by "rolling" the focus of the lens just ahead of and behind the plane of focus quickly, allowing you to rapidly choose the best focus. I use my motor drive when shooting this way to ensure that at least one shot will be crisp and tack sharp. Most SLR and digital SLR cameras have superb auto-focus that can be used effectively in most situations. Setting the auto-focus to AI Servo will allow the lens to continually readjust its focus as long as the subject is kept in the same focal point.

Shutter Speed
A fast shutter speed is ideal for shooting images of birds in flight, but there are trade-offs. I prefer to shoot a film (or digital) ISO of 100 or 200 to keep the image crisp. I shoot with the lens aperture wide open (f5.6), and I try to keep the sun at my back.

Be sure to study the birds and their patterns. Often you will be able to predict where the action is developing and better determine how to put the excitement and drama of migration into your images.