Birds In-Flight Action Photography Tips

I love action photography and birds in-flight (BIF) are one of my favorite forms of this, especially birds of prey (hawks, eagles, owls & falcons).
Seconds count in this type of fast action photography, grab the moment if you can, and you can if you practice.
I shoot hand-held and like to hike, for me this is the ultimate form of photography. I have no patience (ok, maybe a bit), I can not sit in one spot for more than 20 minutes as I feel I might be missing something around the next bend.
From early on I practiced on anything that would move/fly, but mostly practiced on starlings, pigeons, & ducks. Downtown people would stare wondering what the heck I was doing photographing pigeons, but it does pay off and you can actually get some very cool photos of pigeons like this .
Not only for birds, but for everything, grabbing the moment is everything in photography. When you have only seconds to make the shot, being able to lift the camera, find your target, focus and shoot makes or breaks the shot.

high speed falcon in-flight photography

Frames Per Second

High speed FPS helps photograph sequences, but won’t make them all in focus. Tracking the the bird or beast is half the battle, if your focus point slips off your target it doesn’t matter how many frames per-second your camera can fire, they will ALL be out of focus. If you can track your target, 3 frames per second will be just fine, no need to purchase a new camera.

Eyes in focus on this duck in-flight

Exposure Mode

When shooting birds in flight, try to shoot in M mode, setting your aperture and shutter speed manually will reduce the amount of bird silhouettes (black blobs) you take home with you. Slipping off your target in any other mode will make your camera suddenly meter differently, possibly on a clear blue sky and will result in a black bird blob, just the silhouette.

Goldeneye Duck in focus and in-flight!

Shutter Speed & Aperture

The ghostly hawk owl in flight

Shutter Speed

I have photographed birds and other moving targets at insanely low shutter speeds and have captured the moment, but luck had a lot to do with the capture. Try keeping your shutter speed above 1/1000 of a second or more, remember the faster the shutter speed the better your chances are on a sharp in-focus photograph of that bird in-flight.

Hawk Owl high speed fly by

Aperture

Try to keep your aperture up around f/8 (if possible) and if the light is there, try even tighter apertures, this way if you miss those eyes the depth of field at f/8 will help keep things in focus. Really though, its all about light and if you don’t have it you will be forced to shoot wide open. Don’t forget you can also bump up your ISO value to maintain higher shutter speeds needed for birds in-flight photography.

Northern Hawk Owl Captured In-Flight

Focus Tracking

I have tried a lot of different tracking options (most are crap!), but I find the best is centre focus (single focus point). Focus on the head and/or eyes of your target, start with 50mm to 100mm lenses and work your way up to 300mm +. Its a lot easier tracking with a 100mm than it is with a 300mm lens but with either it will take lots of practice..
When practicing, try to photograph birds from left to right before trying to grab them head-on. Head on shots are tough to make and the faster the shutter speed the better, or if possible, a slow large bird I keep both eyes open when tracking birds, not sure if this will help you, but you should try it. If the path of the bird or beast is erratic, its easy to lose track of it in the view finder of your camera. I find keeping both eyes open helps me get back on track if I lose my target even for a split second.
The farther away you are from your target, the easier it will be to track, and photograph it so I suggest you start at a good distance away.
But (always a butt!) if you plan on printing these in-flight images, you better get in close so the subject fills the frame, as too much cropping will reduce your print size dramatically.

Focus Speed

Not all lenses, or camera bodies for that matter are created equally, some are fast focusing, some are not. If you are shooting large birds like eagles, slow is fine as these birds heads are close to the body size of a medium sized bird. Really though, you should look into a fast focusing 300mm to 400mm that you can handhold for shooting birds in flight. I have my own opinions on good and bad lenses for this type of aplication, but wont go into it here

This tutorial is what I do, it might not work for you but give it a try and let me know how you make out. I hope this helps you capture more in-focus photos of anything that happens by at high speed! There are no real tricks to BIF photography, just lots of practice.
Rob