Birds Swallows hunting - advice?

[Cebrooker]

I thought I would give myself a baptism by fire with my new R6ii and 100-500 by photographing swallows feeding. I have being using zone AF with animal mode selected, 40FPS. I have experimented with AF Case Mode 1 and 3 but have found 1 to be better. Does anyone have any tips for higher success rates? I accept it is a bit of a spray and pray but I am sure I can improve my technique.

Heavily cropped and quite noisy but this is the most interesting shot so far.

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[Bucolic Old Sir Henry]

Swallows in flight are really hard to photograph: they're small, fast moving and very difficult to get large in the frame. I'm no expert, but if you can find a spot where they're flying repeating patterns to go through insects they're feeding on, or swooping down to drink from a pond or pool, you give yourself a better chance of getting the shot.

Beyond the obvious settings and "spray and pray", the only advice I have is that shorter focal lengths are easier to pan on the subject. At 500mm very small movements can make you miss the target. This one was with a 70-200...

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[Flango85]

Never tried Swallows before. But I don’t think I can pan my 100-500 smoothly enough. If you want another challenge try hummingbirds. I have the R6MK2 as well and use case 1 and spray and pray for birds in flight.

 

[jcass]

Location, location, location. I agree with the post above. If you can find a location where the swallows repeat habit and they're close enough, that may be the biggest difference. They are difficult to capture no matter what.

Also, try setting the stabilizer mode on your lens to 2 for panning. See if that works better for you. For me in mode 1, I think I see a lag/overshoot in the horizontal axis when starting and stopping panning. YMMV.

Finally, process your image with noise reduction even at ISO 2000. DxO and LR Denoise really do wonders.

 

[David Berry]

Duade Paton has a few tips on photographing Welcome Swallows in his latest video. I've skipped the first ten minutes which relate to the R5m2 firmware 1.1.0.

 

[Bucolic Old Sir Henry]

Duade Paton has a few tips on photographing Welcome Swallows in his latest video. I've skipped the first ten minutes which relate to the R5m2 firmware 1.1.0.

Thanks for the link. I like Duade's presentation, and after watching his section on swallows, I feel lot better about some of my efforts.

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I dream of getting a "drinking" shot such as the one he shows. Our pond has trees on one side which means they have a restricted flightpath, and although I have seen them do it, I've yet to nail the shot.

We have a friend in Spain who lives in a wooded valley above Girona. A mob of swallows regularly visits his infinity pool, swooping and drinking, but the first time I saw them do it, I only had the 24-105 f4 on the original R, and did not nail the settings... This was the best I could do (and it's a heavy crop):

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We visited him last year. I had the R6 and 70-200 f4, and spent ages by the pool. Swallows were not cooperating. I hope we'll be invited back next time we're Europe (next year, with luck).