![\"western](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/western-meadowlark-0680-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWings of birds move fast at takeoff (and in flight)\u00a0and the smaller the bird the faster they move. This means that photographers must be cognizant of shutter speed if they want any control over the amount of motion blur in their images.<\/p>\n
Wing-tip motion blur is a matter of taste. Some folks have no problem with it because softness of wing-tips\u00a0implies motion and seems natural given the speed of the wings. Others (like me)\u00a0prefer to see more crispness and detail\u00a0in the moving wings. And sharpness isn’t an absolute, instead it’s a matter of degree.<\/p>\n
I’ll illustrate with two Western Meadowlark images taken this past summer on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I don’t remember\u00a0this particular bird but I can tell by my camera settings that my intent was to photograph it perched. Because of their twitchy, jerky movements I typically try for a SS of about 1\/2500 sec for small\u00a0perched birds, knowing it’s not enough to get their wings sharp if they take off. When this bird launched my SS wasn’t nearly fast enough to\u00a0get the wings sharp. I know that the softness of the wings is due to\u00a0a relatively slow\u00a0shutter speed rather than insufficient depth of field because the wings are in roughly the same plane as the body of the bird.<\/p>\n And keep in mind that meadowlarks are several times larger than sparrow-sized birds so I’d have had even more motion blur\u00a0with a smaller bird.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n With this bird the only chance I had for a decent shot was at takeoff because while it was perched it was buried in the sagebrush so I had deliberately dialed in a much faster shutter speed. Even at 1\/5000 the wings aren’t tack sharp but they’re much sharper than those in the first image. For my tastes this amount of motion blur is perfectly acceptable but I wouldn’t want much more.<\/p>\n The option of using fast shutter speeds is dependent on a number of factors -including available light, speed\u00a0and quality of the lens and how much digital noise you’re willing to put up with when using higher ISO’s (some cameras are better at handling high ISO’s than others). But for me I’d always\u00a0rather have a small amount of grain in my images than a soft bird.<\/p>\n I’ve posted about shutter speeds and motion blur before but I believe it to be such an important issue for bird\u00a0photographers that I thought it was worth another go-round. For those not interested in photo-tech geekiness I hope you at least enjoyed the second image. It’s one that I quite like.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wings of birds move fast at takeoff (and in flight) and the smaller the bird the faster they move. This means that photographers must be cognizant of shutter speed if they want any control over the amount of motion blur in their images.<\/p>\n![\"western](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/western-meadowlark-0637-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n