Tawny Frogmouth, Rosser Park

Recently when looking around our local Botanical Gardens park, Rosser Park, Gold Coast, Australia, my wife was fortunate to come across a couple of Tawny Frogmouth birds, quietly sitting in a tree. The above is a mature one and below an immature younger bird. I had been wandering around the park looking for birds and photographing water birds. I had quite a productive day and when I got back to the car, my wife pointed out these Frogmouths, a very nice find.

Immature Tawny Frogmouth, Rosser Park

They may not be the most beautiful birds but I see them as magnificent creatures.

The Tawny Frogmouth hunts at night and spend the day roosting on a dead log or tree branch, close to the tree trunk as these birds are. They are very camouflaged and some times difficult to see as they can look like part of the tree.

These birds are very easy to photograph as they remain quite motionless during the day. Here I used a monopod to steady the camera and electronic flash for fill in lighting as the bird was back lit. I used a Nikon D700 camera and a Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S lens.

The Tawny Frogmouth feeds mainly on insects, they have exceptionally good hearing and eyesight.

They are different from owls in that they catch their prey by their beak rather than their feet.

My wife does not normally do a lot of photography, however she does enjoy  it occasionally. On a recent trip my wife borrowed one of my older cameras, a Nikon D2H, it is a wonderful fast focusing camera for fast action photography but has its limitations as it is only 4 MPixels, not very much room for any cropping when capturing birds, but it can still provide some beautiful images. She used a Nikon 17-55mm zoom lens on the camera. This lens is an excellent photo-journalism  f/2.8  lens. I would not really class it as a birding lens, however she captured some very nice images with the outfit.

The first image  below is as captured with only minimal post processing with some minor sharpening, it is not cropped.

Purple Crowned Lorikeet

The above image of the Purple Crowned Lorikeet was taken in a walk through aviary, the Rainbow Jungle Aviary at Kalbarri, on the Western Australia coast. This was a beautiful aviary with a very large variety of birds in beautiful surroundings, with plenty of flowering shrubs for the birds to feed on. Kalbarri is a wonderful spot as it has abundant wild flowers in season and has a magnificent rugged coast line.

The image below of the Silver Gull was captured at Penguin Island, a small island close to the coast south of Perth, Western Australia. This island is a breeding rookery for sea birds and had just been opened, as it had been closed for the birds breeding season. Some of the birds were very aggressive as we were photographing them.

Silver Gull in Flight

Both of the above images were captured with the 17-55mm zoom lens at 55mm. Normally I would not even try to capture birds with such a short lens, but the images turned out very nicely in my opinion. I was quite pleased with what she accomplished.

Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala)

This Noisy Miner (Manorina Melanocephala) has been captured at Rosser Park, Botanical Gardens, Gold Coast Australia. I really love this park as it is very productive in the images I get there.

This Noisy Miner is feeding on a Grevillea flower. The image was captured with a Nikon D700 and 300mm f/4D lens. Whether you shoot with Nikon or Canon lenses the use of a 300mm f/4 lens is a wonderful size lens for chasing birds, it is smallish, light to handle and with its f/4 aperture is suitable for a variety of lighting conditions.

For this image I used a monopod to help keep the camera outfit steady.

Once lenses get to 400mm or over they become quite heavy and more difficult to hand hold, I find the 300mm ideal. In addition the longer lenses become very costly.

Rainbow Lorikeet

Recently I went for a short trip to a local park, Rosser Park, Gold Coast, Australia, near to where I live and was fortunate to find a couple of beautiful birds. At this park there is a large lake to attract the water birds and also many native grevilleas and flowering shrubs to attract the native birds and honey-eaters.

Birds are beautiful creatures to photograph, sometimes they are difficult and sometimes easy to find. Generally where the birds are feeding on flower nectar they will come and go very frequently and it is just a matter of waiting until they come near you. In the case of the above Rainbow Lorikeet I used a 300mm f/4.0  lens and a monopod to steady the camera and lens. The birds were frequently moving around from flower to flower and were generally relatively easy to follow.

Sometimes a 300mm lens is not quite long enough for birds, particularly smaller ones. An economical way to get longer is to use a 1.4 times or 2.0 times teleconverter, but using the teleconverter will cause loss of light and this leads to a 300mm f/2.8 lens being better than the 300mm f/4 lens that I used here. The cost of  f/2.8 lenses will be significantly more than f/4 lens and this can amount to many thousand dollars.

White-Faced Heron, Immature

The image of the White-faced Heron was quite easy to capture as the bird remained motionless for a considerable time, again this bird was captured with the 300mm f/4 lens. A 300mm lens is plenty for a bird such as this as they are quite large. With the above bird I  had to back off a little to fit it into the frame.

For smaller birds telephoto lenses can sometimes never be long enough, but for birds such as the heron above, sometimes even a 200mm lens can be enough.

Selecting a lens is quite complicated as the are some important considerations.

• Do you get an f/2.8, f/4 or f/5.6 lens, this can be driven by cost as the cost will increase greatly for the lower aperture lenses.
• The focal length will depend on how close you can get t0o the subject and also how large the subject is.
• The provision of image stabilisation or vibration reduction can also be a consideration in longer lenses if you will be hand holding the lens.
• Sometimes a cropped camera (camera with an APS-C sensor) is better for bird photography as it gives an equivalent focal length longer than the normal lens focal length.

The possibilities for selecting lenses for this type of bird photography are summarised for both the Nikon system and the Canon system.

Pied Currawong

This Pied Currawong has been photographed at Tweed Heads, Northern, New South Wales. I love the challenge of photographing birds, some birds are quite difficult to get close enough, but these Currawongs are quite easy to capture, being so large and relatively quiet to get close. I liked the positioning of this bird with the ocean in the background and thought it would make a pleasing image. Generally when I set out on a photographic trip I aim for certain subjects and on this trip was not really prepared for birds.

It is relatively easy to get quite close to these Currawongs and for this image I used my Nikon D700 and 24-120mm VR, zoom lens, not really a birding lens as I was really photographing seascapes. For most birding I will use my favourite lens, the 300mm, f/4.0, with a monopod, however the shorter zoom proved to be quite suitable in this case.

The currawong is essentially a bird of the open forest and frequents the Eastern part of Australia.

As I set out to capture a seascape on this trip, I have also included another image from Tweed Heads, as the rocky coastline is beautiful in this area.

Tweed Heads

This image has also been captured with the 24-120mm zoom lens.

Black Swan Family

This beautiful family of Black Swans (Cygnus atratus) has been captured at a local Botanic Gardens, Rosser Park, on the Gold Coast, Australia.

I was fortunate enough to find this family of swans together with the cygnet and I just waited until they were in a suitable position for a nice image.

A Nikon D700 and a 300mm lens was used with a monopod.

This was a relatively easy capture as the swans were not in a hurry and just slowly drifted around together as a family. Most smaller birds move around more quickly and are much more difficult to capture with the camera.

I find the 300mm lens to be ideal for this type of photography.

Pacific Black Duck

I love capturing images of birds, it is quite a challenge, as generally everything is out of your control, apart from the camera settings and you need to get those settings correct very quickly before the bird has flown away.

The above image is of a Pacific Black Duck and was captured at a local park which I regularly frequent. The image was taken with a D700 camera and 300mm lens.

A 300mm lens is about the shortest practical lens for this type of photography and I  generally prefer my Nikon DX camera as the 300mm lens becomes an effective 450mm lens.

For the above image I used a monopod to help stabilise the camera/lens combination.

The main difficulty with birds is getting close enough and holding the long lens steady. As I mentioned above a DX format camera has some advantage with birds. Also a teleconverter can also be a great help to bring the bird closer. With the 300mm Nikon f/4 lens I used for this image the lens works very well with a teleconverter. If I used a DX camera with a 1.4 times teleconverter I would have had an equivalent focal length of (300 x 1.5 x 1.4) which would give an effective lens of 630mm. This is quite a cheap way to achieve such focal lengths. A good 600mm lens will set you back many thousands of dollars.

Pelican

One of the faster focussing Nikon cameras will be required for this type of photography, as fast acquisition of focus is essential due to the fast movement of the bird. Some of the ideal cameras in order of preference are the Nikon D3, D700, D300s and the D7000. The image above has been captured with the Nikon D700 camera.

It is a great challenge attempting to freeze the action of a moving bird, but I love the challenge in getting sharp images.

Summarising some of the following will assist in getting better images;

• Fast focussing lens,
• Lens focal length in the range 300-400mm,
• I prefer a light weight lens for this type of photography, I use a 300mm f/4 and I feel that a 300mm f/2.8 lens would be much heavier and consequently more difficult to manage,
• Vibration Reduction (VR) can be very useful to reduce the effect of camera movement, but VR does not assist in stopping the subject movement,
• Low aperture lenses are very useful to aid in using higher shutter speeds,
• High shutter speed is required to freeze any camera and shutter movement,
• High ISO settings are very useful, to enable higher shutter speeds, Due to the high ISO needed sometimes it may be useful to have some noise reduction software to help reduce any noise in the image,
• I find that the image in the viewfinder of an FX camera is brighter and easier to follow the subject compared to an DX camera,
• The DX cameras do have some advantage, as there is a 1.5 times multiplication factor in the effective focal length,
• A monopod is very useful for birds in flight as it makes the outfit very manoverable and fast to achieve focus, it is very easy to spin around to follow the bird as it moves around,
• A tripod is not so useful due to lack of manoverablity,
• Above all some fast reflexes are required to track the subject.

Some reviews of  suitable cameras are covered in the following links, Nikon Camera Reviews and Nikon Lens Reviews.

 Nikon Super Telephoto Lenses

Butcher Bird 2

One of the most difficult things to learn with the super telephoto lenses are the techniques to help get high image quality. By referring to super telephoto lenses I am talking about lenses of 300mm or longer particularly the longer range of lenses.

Bear in mind that if you are using expensive super telephoto lenses you need high quality support systems.

There are several options when using these long lenses which are summarised as follows:

Hand Held

Hand holding a very long lens is not always the best way to capture sharp images, although with some of the latest lenses which incorporate Vibration Reduction, hand holding can provide a good option.

I find that one of the best ways to hand hold a long lens is as follows. Place your left hand on your right shoulder, hold the camera with your right hand and balance the camera on your left arm which is supported by your shoulder.

Another good hand holding method is to hold the camera with your right hand and place the lens on the palm of your left hand with your elbow rested and supported by your body.

Monopods

Monopods are very convenient as they can generally be used in crowded spaces without hampering others near you in a crowded area.

When using a monopod think of it as a tripod, with two of the legs being your own legs and the monopod itself being the third leg of the tripod.

An excellent compact monopod for very large lenses is the Gitzo GM5561T Traveler 6x Carbon Fiber Monopod.

Monopod Heads

When using a monopod, a monopod head is very useful to attach the camera or lens and to make it easier to use.

One of the excellent heads is the Kirk MPA-1 Swivel Tilt Monopod Head. If you are using a head such as this you will need to get an Arca Swiss compatible plate for your lens.

Tripods

The tripod is our three legged friend. A good tripod system will improve your images to the best quality possible.

One of the best available tripods is the Gitzo GT5531S Systematic 6X Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs, this tripod will enable you to support lenses up to 600 to 800mm.

Tripod Ball Heads

An important part of the tripod is the tripod head, a ball head is very useful for general tripod usage however the best solution for long lenses si the gimbal head. An excellent tripod head is the Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 sp (Single Pan) Ballhead with Quick Release. With this ball head you will also require specific plates for you lens or camera.

Tripod Gimbal Heads

Gimbal heads are excellent to facilitate the easy handling of your long lens, the theory of gimbal heads is such that the lens appears weightless when handling the lens but also gives exceptional stability.

There are essentially two types of gimbal heads, the side mounting type the Wimberley Sidekick Gimbal Head Adapter for Arca-Swiss Style Quick Release Clamps or the full gimbal Wimberley WH-200 Tripod Head II with Quick Release Base.

Camera Settings

Yes camera settings can have an impact when using long lenses as these lenses are far more subject to camera movement.

• Use fast shutter speeds.
• If you are using slow shutter speeds set the vibration reduction switch to on.
• Use mirror lock up if possible.

Rainbow Bee Eater - Goodna

This image of a Rainbow Bee Eater has been captured at Goodna, near Brisbane. I went there to see the beautiful Jacaranda trees in flower but there were plenty of birds around to side track me.

The above image was captured at ISO500, f/11, 1/320 second exposuere time.

Images like this are very difficult to capture with great detail.

There are several tips which can be applied to help you get sharper bird images when using long lenses.

• In general I find it easier to use a lens which is not too large or too heavy. I really like my 300mm f/4 lens for this reason. Some of the bigger lenses with more reach, are far more difficult to handle, for example 400, 500 and 600mm lenses.
• I prefer to hand hold my lens and use a monopod, I find that hand holding, gives far more flexibility in being able to  stalk and approach birds.
• A monopod will give a big advantage in keeping your camera steady. My 300mm lens does not have vibration reduction, however with the monopod I have captured images at shutter speeds down to 1/60 second and still retained excellent sharpness.
• If you get to know your camera at higher ISO levels, it will help you to get sharper images by using higher shutter speeds, so up the ISO as required.
• Be careful in using low apertures, as at low apertures the depth of field can become very narrow. The depth of field will also get very narrow as you focus closer to the subject.
• When operating the shutter button do not depress the button suddenly ,it is best to gradually roll the finger over the shutter button gradually as this will help avoid moving the camera.

Bird photography is one of the most difficult subjects to photograph so just practice and practice.