Birds First attempt of a fast flying bird - Tui

[DPiddy]

Hello all,

Its exciting getting a new toy, such as the R5, but the frustrating part is then being stuck in a hard lock down! This severely limits where one can go and what one can try to shoot with said new toy. The other day I noticed that we have a number of native Tui birds flying around in a tree on the property and at times you catch them flying in and out. I thought seeing I am here I will try to have a play with the R5 and see if I can capture any good shots of these birds in flight (baring in mind that I have never been one for taking fast shots of anything!)

I tried to make some setting adjustments to the R5 (again like learning something brand new compared to my Canon 5D) - as a first time attempt at this I tried some of the following
- Set a relatively high ISO, and fast shutter (what i thought was fast anyway)
- Set AF to zone and not face tracking, also keep on servo for AF.
- Changed the standard set up so that the back * button would be for focus and the main shutter would then be just to take the shot (have never tried this before)
- using my EF 70-200mm f2.8 but having a higher f stop to try to get more of the bird in focus
- finally setting to high speed shooting (figured i would try what 20 fps would do for me)

Save to say not all worked as I hoped it would… firstly i think a problem i cam across was that I was shooting to an SD card and no CFexpress (didn’t have one of those as yet). So my fps seemed to be very low - perhaps capped at 6 or so frames.
I really struggled trying to track these birds and get them in focus (perhaps first main lesson ….dont start on something that moves so fast and erratically!) when i thought i may have them focus and start shooting it would as likely miss them or not be in focus…the limited FPS also prevented getting too many shots that could be of any use.

Anyway - first attempt and thought I would load here for advice - I dont have zoom lens better than the 70-200 at this stage!

 

[RedCobra]

Wait till you get a RF 100-500. At 500mm it's tough to keep them in the frame. I use Animal eye focus and get about 2 or 3 shots out of 50 or so as keepers. I used to shoot skeet. That was easier than shooting eagles. Practice practice practice.

 

[DPiddy]

Thanks ! So when you shoot on animal focus what are your other focus settings to stop it going in and out or jumping to another subject ?
Those have been my common issues

 

[RedCobra]

When shooting flying birds, usually the only thing in the VF is the bird, so nothing to jump to. I use servo, multi- shot mode, eval metering. And with my running dogs, as long as I keep them in the frame it stays locked on.