Bird Photography for Beginners 10 Tips ~ Photography Blog for Beginners

The best photography subject is bird photography what I liked most. Captured birds are quite challenging, let's share Bird Photography for Beginners 10 Tips that, I think is really going to help you if you're just getting started as a beginner.

Bird Photography Equipments / Bird Photography Lenses
Clothes
Aperture Priority with Auto ISO
Exposure Compensation
Focus Area
Bird Position
Auto Focus Flight
Background
Eye Level
Learn some bird behaviour!

1. Bird Photography Equipments / Bird Photography Lenses

When it comes to choosing a camera and lens you really want to think about how you are actually going to use it. I’ve just picked out what I think is the most important things that you should concentrate on and start with.

Best Camera For Bird Photography

DSLR

Nikon Z 50 DX-Format Mirrorless Camera.

Canon EOS 80D Digital SLR Camera.

Nikon D850 FX-Format DSLR Camera.

Fujifilm X-T30 Mirrorless Digital Camera.

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Full Frame DSLR Camera.

Point & Shoot

Canon PowerShot G3 X Digital Camera

Sony Cyber-Shot RX10 IV with 0.03s Auto-Focus & 25x Optical Zoom.

Nikon P1000

Nikon P900

Also read: What Camera Should I Buy ?

Lenses For Bird Photography

Sigma and Tamron 150-600 f5.6-6.3

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM.

Canon RF 600mm f/11 IS STM.

Nikon AF-S 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR.

Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM | Contemporary.

Fujifilm XF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR.

Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS.

2. Clothes

The clothing you wear that matters a lot, my recommendation to wear camouflage clothes for the small advantage of not spooking them by dressing in clothing that blends in with your surroundings.

3. Aperture Priority with Auto ISO

Tip number three is all about exposure. I would suggest you use aperture priority with automatic. is now the aperture priority on your camera should be A or AV and the reason for using this if you do it by selecting a fairly wide aperture then because it's letting in more light what it does is it helps keep the shutter speed high and that's going to help to avoid camera shake.

The automatic ISO part is really useful for lower light so if the light levels drop then instead of the shutter speed just continuously getting slower which you don't want the ISO will go up to combat that instead and it will help keep the shutter speed high. There are other options manual and shutter priority you can try but there are different reasons why I don't think they're as good so if you're a beginner would definitely say give that a try at first that's aperture priority with automatic.

4. Exposure Compensation

To use exposure compensation and I would say if you're a beginner this is probably one of the most useful things you can learn in terms of exposure so with the beauty of digital. We can take the picture we can look on the back and we can see if it looks okay sometimes it might come out looking too bright or too dark that’s where the exposure compensation comes in so you should have a plus-minus button hopefully somewhere on your camera and all you do is press that down and then use a wheel or a dial to adjust it so if your picture's too dark or too bright you can then adjust that take the picture again and it should look perfect.

A good example of when to use this is often photographing against blank skies the camera either underexposes so what you need to do is overexpose you use your exposure compensation and add a bit of extra plus exposure.

Another common example is photographing white birds where they just come out too white and too bright because they reflect so much light in that situation what you want to do is actually reduce the exposure with the exposure compensation dial and then take the picture again so getting the habit of that checking your exposure and if necessary use the exposure compensation.

5. Focus Area

Tip number five is focus area so you're likely to have some degree of control as to how big an area you can actually focus with through the viewfinder. So simply just focus points and whilst a big area can be useful photographing say birds in flight against the blue sky, for example, I would advise that you actually close it down and use fewer focus points smaller area for most of your bird photography.

6. Bird Position

So that leads me very nicely on to tip number six which is to get the bird higher up in the frame. What do I mean by this well if you are using a centre focus point and you just focus on the bird's head or eye which you should do and take the picture then very commonly you're going to end up with the head in the centre but the rest of the body of the bird is going to be lower down and the tail is going to be very close to the bottom of it might even end up being chopped out of the bottom of the frame.

So a really easy way to fix this is to kind of lock the focus and recompose so if you're using back button focus, for example, you would focus with your centre focus point on the bird's head using your thumb to focus then take your thumb off the focus button recompose point the camera slightly down so the bird goes higher up in the frame and then take your picture the other alternative is that you can compose the picture exactly as you want and then actually choose the focus point that is closest to the bird's head.

7. Auto Focus Flight

Tip number seven to make sure you've got your correct autofocus setting when you're photographing birds in flight or indeed any action. So if you're tracking your bird in flight you want to make sure that you've got the continuous autofocus setting this is likely to be AFC on your camera on canon it's called Servo and then what that will do is to track the bird as it continuously moves and keep it in focus. And if you're using the shutter button then you want to keep your finger half-pressed as you follow the bird the entire time and then press further down to start firing if you're using back button focus then you want to keep the back button entirely depressed whilst you're tracking the bird in flight and then your finger is going to fire the shutter separately.

8. Background

Think about where you're pointing the camera when you're photographing the bird can you move in any way to get a better position to give yourself a clearer background you want to try. And avoid really messy looking backgrounds and also you want to avoid pointing towards white skies as much as possible.

So have a think if even just slightly moving to the left slightly to the right just a few feet can make a real difference to where you're pointing and can give you a much clearer smoother and maybe even more colourful.

9. Eye Level

To get to the same level as the subject so if you've got a bird on the ground or particularly ducks on the water-

You want to try and get down as much as possible to their level and photograph them from there it just it's just more engaging. I think the pictures are more engaging when you get to the same level they are going to look better and also because you are lower down it makes the background further away which makes the background more out of focus and that tends to improve the images as well so as much as possible try and get to eye level with the bird.

10. Learn some bird behaviour!

To learn some bird behaviour like calls and songs so even if you're a beginner in bird photography the more you know about the bird the better your pictures are going to be.

In the end, so have a think about the bird that you're trying to photograph maybe you know what does it eat maybe lots of birds displaying in the spring that can be a good time the more you learn about the bird and its behaviour not only the more you know but the more you can predict what it's going to do next that's what's going to get you the best pictures so if you really want to improve your photography the more you can learn about individual bird behaviour the better.

These 10 tips of BirdPhotography for Beginners will help you to capture better bird images and enhance your process of photography. As a beginner is very important tips and tricks involve while you go out birding. Don't think too much about expensive cameras, lenses to do bird photography in the beginner stage, you can learn the basics then you can upgrade and invest in advanced camera gear.

Happy Reading.