The 'Canon 1000D' Camera Settings For Bird Photography ?!

I am sure some of the more expert photographers will give you some great advice so here is a link from me coz Im not that brill at the pretty pictures lol.

www.mikeatkinson.net/Tutorial-4-Camera-Settings.htm

Thanks :) Will take a look

I'll try and help the best I can, as I have the updated version of this camera, the 1100D, but I've only had it 4 months and already using manual (As I'm getting made to!!), which most of the time I struggle with!

But firstly it depends on what type of bird photos you're taking.

If you're taking photos of birds in flight AI Servo and a high ISO speed is best, and also depending on the weather that will change on what F stop you use.

If you're taking normal photos of birds ie your garden then obviously ISO can be dropped down etc.

For normal photography I have my F stop set on either 6.3 or 7.1, ISO is usually on the lowest but it depends on the weather, if it's sunny I'll put it up to 200 or something. I always keep it on AI Servo, as that helps if I do want to take a photo of a bird in flight.

I think I've covered everything, but like I said I'm really really new to this, so if you have any questions I can't answer I'm sure someone else can.

Becca :-)

Thanks Becca. Great help :)

Oh I forgot a couple of your questions!

AF Point Selection, mine is currently set on Manual Selection.

And WB, it depends sometimes I change mine to 'cloudy' etc or sometimes I'll leave it on auto.

I think the best thing is to just change around the settings and see what works best :-)

Becca :-)

Yeah, i normally just mess about with settings if i can (sometimes its hard with wildlife though!) haha

Hi Lauren

Firstly thanks Doggie for the very kind comments on my pictures :-)

Becca has given you some good advise to.

I guess there isnt any right way to consistently get good shots. I'm very lucky living here in Oman that I have no trouble with light, usually I have too much light to be honest. I'll tell you what works for me and the settings I "normally" use.

I generally shoot at f8.0 - thats because I find it the best compromise for depth of field and sharpness. This is where I'm lucky with light as even at f8.0 I can get very high shutter speeds.

ISO I rarely drop below 400 and often shoot at 1600 modern cameras now are really good at handling noise and I always aim for a shutter speed a minimum of 1/500 sec even for relatively static birds. For flying birds I want at least 1-1000 sec. I dont know what lens you use but a simple rule is aim for a shutter speed at least equal to the focal length of the lens, remember that your camera has a 1.6 multiplyer effect making a 400mm sort of equivalent to a 640 mm lens.

Almost always I use partial metering in AP mode and only the centre point active for focus and single shot focus. I find I get more sharp shots in single AF mode than servo. However for flying birds or moving animals etc you need to use servo - forget AI sero where the camera focuses in single AF mode then switches to servo if it detects the object has started to move either towards or away from the camera. In my experience it doesnt work properly.

Set you white balance to auto and forget about it. 90% of the time it will be spot on and you can always tweak it in post processing if your not happy with what the camera set. If you shoot RAW you have 100% control of this in post processing. Even with Jpegs you can correct colour casts. Do you shoot RAW or Jpeg?

Hope this helps and good luck and look forward to seeing your pictures

Andrew

Thanks so much for the help.

I normally shoot RAW just because of the advantage when editing really!

I will try all of your advice out today and see how I get on :)

Good luck and have fun!

By the way, RAW is best.

Andrew

If that's the case I'm switching to RAW today then, I've been putting it off but I'll do it and see how I get on!

Becca :-)