![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/gray-catbird-1506d-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"gray-catbird-1506d-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nThis is the price I pay for my preferred style of bird photography. At times it can be a steep one.<\/p>\n
Regular readers of Feathered Photography are well aware that when it comes to my bird photography I’m much more interested in action photos that involve behaviors, flight, takeoffs and other kinds of interesting action than I am in just “pretty bird pictures” (although I take both types). Birds are incredibly fast and those types of shots require fast shutter speeds to get them sharp so my default camera settings typically involve high ISO’s and apertures in the range of f\/5.6 – f\/6.3 (sometimes when I don’t have my teleconverter attached and the light is low I even open up to f\/5 or f\/4).<\/p>\n
Those settings generally serve my preferred style of bird photography well for a variety of reasons but there’s a high price to pay in certain situations. At f\/5.6 – f\/6.3 my depth of field is very shallow so at my fairly extreme focal lengths, especially when I’m close to the bird, I often don’t get the entire bird sharp. In action shots it doesn’t matter so much but in those “pretty bird pictures” it can stand out like two sore thumbs and be more than aggravating.<\/p>\n
Following is an example from yesterday morning in the Wasatch Mountains.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I usually sit at this spot for about an hour on each trip to the mountains and I often see and hear catbirds at a distance while I’m there but catbirds are extremely shy and elusive so they don’t like to come out and play. I’d estimate that on average it takes about 8-10 hours (8-10 trips) for every brief opportunity I get with a catbird up close and in the clear such as this fairly recently fledged juvenile (a young bird as evidenced by its prominent gape and the brownish wash over its plumage). I have few if any quality images of catbirds this age so this was an exciting moment for me.<\/p>\n But, and it’s a big “but”, I was close to the bird and at my default camera settings I only had enough depth of field to get the head sharp. Notice that sharpness falls off rapidly in this pose because the tail is much closer to me than the head so only the head is sharp enough and the tail is a blurry mess.<\/p>\n Yes, I could have taken the approximately two seconds required for me to change my aperture to something like f\/14 and then refocus on the bird’s head but two seconds is an eternity with quirky, flitty and spooky songbirds so I decided to fire away and hope for a good head turn instead. I got the head turn but I still had a dreadfully soft tail. I’m happy to have the shot but I’d be much more pleased with it if the rest of the bird was sharper.<\/p>\n And no, results like this certainly don’t tempt me to abandon my default camera settings designed to capture behaviors and fast action. I have too many successes to even consider it.<\/p>\n But it still burns my butt when I have to pay the piper.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS – Apologies for covering a subject I’ve covered before and especially for the photo-geekiness of this post which will have little interest for some of my readers. But photo-geekiness is how I get my images and I know that at least some photographers among my readers appreciate occasional posts like this one. Many of us learn from them, including yours truly.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the price I pay for my preferred style of bird photography. At times it can be a steep one.<\/p>\n