Trip to north padre and port aransas

[Zach]

Hey guys, I’ll will be going on a vacation to north padre and mustang island with the family around may 10th till the 16th, i will be hitting the beach mostly but I wanna get a lot of good birding shots while there! I have gotten some before but I’m hoping to do better this time and I’d like to ask the best birders I know for help, I plan on hitting a few hotspots I found before, like the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center, Charlie’s pasture nature trail and a little place called paradise pond.

Plus there will be lots of shore birds too, my main goal is just to get great shots of any birds I can.

My main rig now is the canon 77D with my 55-250 lens (still saving up for the sigma 150-600), and I also have a drone now, it’s a pretty decent one too, so that will take some awesome beach and ocean shots.

You can see my last two trips photos here https://www.flickr.com/gp/202332551@N05/976z4ni4zv

My main ask is for help with birds in flight, good settings for them and good ways to focus on them too, and any tips or tricks or possible locations if anyone else has been there before too

Any and all y’all can say will help and be greatly appreciated.

~Zach

[Kayaker72]

If you are trying to freeze motion with birds, I am still not great at this, but use as fast as shutter speed as possible. Use all the speed. It is amazing how you will reveal layers of sharpness beyond "usably sharp" with faster shutter speeds. One thought is to start at very fast shutter speeds and if you are uncomfortable with the ISO, after you have a series of shots at the fast shutter speed, slowly slow your shutter and decrease your ISO to see if you can get the shot, but a less noisy version.

But, to talk about minimums, for BIF, it does depend a bit on the size of bird, what you are trying to accomplish, and how quick the motion is that you are trying to capture. Small birds tend to be faster. Dives = fast.

I shoot in manual mode, but other modes could be used.

Even larger birds require some fast shutter speeds. My target is usually something like 1/1600th of a second, but there gets to be a lot of variation based on available light. I start noticing blur usually at 1/800th of a second, sometimes 1/1,000th of a second, but I'll still get some usable shots at those shutter speeds, so it depends on available light, how fast the action is and if I was being dumb at that moment.

Smaller birds movement, I target 1/2000th (maybe a bit slower) of a second or faster.

Very fast action, landings take offs: ~1/3200th of a second or faster.

Of course, if you want wing blur, 1/100th to 1/400th of a second is a pretty good range. Most of my hummingbird shots are around 1/200th of a second.

Aperture tends to be wide open for the lens. The time to go to higher aperture numbers is if you need DoF for a flock of birds or if a bird is very close to you.

ISO and metering tends to be a bit of a discussion point. I tend to do one of two things, if lighting is variable I tend to switch to Auto-ISO and spot metering and try to get the bird in center of frame when shooting. If lighting is more consistent, I tend to freeze ISO at a setting I like and then metering doesn't matter as I am in full manual mode (nothing is auto).

But, with all this, I absolutely drop lower than these recommended minimums. Usually I regret it at least a little as I see motion blur.

Enjoy your trip!

[neuroanatomist]

I'd start with Tv mode, 1/1600 or 1/2000 s and Auto ISO. For birds on the shoreline, drop to 1/1000 s or so. Use your maximum frame rate (6 fps, IIRC). The camera will keep the lens wide open and raise the ISO as needed. If you are good with processing RAW images, you can get better noise reduction with DxO Photolab or PureRAW than the camera will give you (1-2 stops less visible noise, in my experience).

[clemmb]

Alittle bit of a drive. About 1-1/2 hrs
AransasNational Wildlife Refuge
JonesLake Wildlife Viewing
Cheers

[Zach]

sorry for the late reply, been dealing with jury duty...

If you are trying to freeze motion with birds, I am still not great at this, but use as fast as shutter speed as possible. Use all the speed. It is amazing how you will reveal layers of sharpness beyond "usably sharp" with faster shutter speeds. One thought is to start at very fast shutter speeds and if you are uncomfortable with the ISO, after you have a series of shots at the fast shutter speed, slowly slow your shutter and decrease your ISO to see if you can get the shot, but a less noisy version.

But, to talk about minimums, for BIF, it does depend a bit on the size of bird, what you are trying to accomplish, and how quick the motion is that you are trying to capture. Small birds tend to be faster. Dives = fast.

I shoot in manual mode, but other modes could be used.

Even larger birds require some fast shutter speeds. My target is usually something like 1/1600th of a second, but there gets to be a lot of variation based on available light. I start noticing blur usually at 1/800th of a second, sometimes 1/1,000th of a second, but I'll still get some usable shots at those shutter speeds, so it depends on available light, how fast the action is and if I was being dumb at that moment.

Smaller birds movement, I target 1/2000th (maybe a bit slower) of a second or faster.

Very fast action, landings take offs: ~1/3200th of a second or faster.

Of course, if you want wing blur, 1/100th to 1/400th of a second is a pretty good range. Most of my hummingbird shots are around 1/200th of a second.

Aperture tends to be wide open for the lens. The time to go to higher aperture numbers is if you need DoF for a flock of birds or if a bird is very close to you.

ISO and metering tends to be a bit of a discussion point. I tend to do one of two things, if lighting is variable I tend to switch to Auto-ISO and spot metering and try to get the bird in center of frame when shooting. If lighting is more consistent, I tend to freeze ISO at a setting I like and then metering doesn't matter as I am in full manual mode (nothing is auto).

But, with all this, I absolutely drop lower than these recommended minimums. Usually I regret it at least a little as I see motion blur.

Enjoy your trip!

thanks Brant, will try testing the higher speeds on some chimney swifts that just returned home this week, and while the iso is better with my new body its still not as good as a FF model, i shall mess around with it and see what it does.

i tend to 90% of the time shoot in manual mode too, i just enjoy having the control. but i may play around with tv mode too as neruro says.

thanks for the speed ranges for big and small birds, hoping to get some takeoff/landing shots.

i've tested my new body with the 55-250 lens and my sharpest aperture is f8-f11, my sharpest shots are always in that area. the lowest i can go is f6.3 fully zoomed anyway so not a huge difference.

metering has always been a touchy thing for me, for most things i just leave it evaluative metering, but i shall mess around with spot and see what happens

thanks brant again for all the tips and help! will post any good shots from the trip as soon as they are worked on

[Zach]

I'd start with Tv mode, 1/1600 or 1/2000 s and Auto ISO. For birds on the shoreline, drop to 1/1000 s or so. Use your maximum frame rate (6 fps, IIRC). The camera will keep the lens wide open and raise the ISO as needed. If you are good with processing RAW images, you can get better noise reduction with DxO Photolab or PureRAW than the camera will give you (1-2 stops less visible noise, in my experience).

thanks neuro! will be testing these setting on some chimney swifts, they are speedy little guys so they are perfect for tests, and i'm decent with raw edits, at least better than a couple of years ago, i'll look into dxo photolab and pureraw as 1-2 stops lest noise sounds incredible!

[Zach]

Alittle bit of a drive. About 1-1/2 hrs
AransasNational Wildlife Refuge
JonesLake Wildlife Viewing
Cheers

i've actually been on the bay side of it! we took a whooping crane tour and we went all the to where we saw the observatory, it was neat! sadly i don't know if i'll have the time to go that far as we didn't plan on going farther north than port aransas. but who knows! thanks