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| Puffins are the funniest birds to watch taking off with a frantic burst of flapping wings and running on water. This series photographed with some difficulty from a small boat in Reykjavik harbour packed full of tourists (including me) with intermittent light rain falling. |
On a recent trip to Iceland and Svalbard I had several opportunities to shoot birds in flight (BIF) with the FZ1000.
I rate the FZ 1000 as the most versatile single piece of photographic equipment (no need to change lenses or add accessory equipment) ever produced. One of its capabilities is BIFs as shown by the pictures here.
However I should warn newcomers to BIF work that the keeper rate is extremely low with any kind of equipment. If I get 5 out of 100 frames clear and sharp I am well enough pleased. A single BIF session could easily involve several hundred frames.
I rate BIF as probably the most difficult photographic challenge for any camera and its operator.
In the majority of my shots the bird is not in the frame or is unsharp for various reasons, including camera shake and not-quite-in-focus or completely out of focus.
With the FZ1000 I set Quality to JPG Fine for long bursts with fast buffer clearing.
S on the main Mode Dial.
AF Mode 1 Area with the AF box central and default size or larger if plain sky is the background.
Burst Mode M gives about 5 fps with AF and EVF preview on each frame.
I have i-Dynamic on Auto to reduce the risk of blown highlights.
i-Zoom is ON.
I generally try for a focal length of E400-600mm. The camera will go to E800mm with i-Zoom but I find it extremely difficult to keep flying birds in frame at the longer focal lengths. Any longer focal length (for instance with Ext-Opt-Zoom + i-Zoom) sees a serious drop in quality.
Shutter speeds need to be fast to combat both camera and subject movement. I find around 1/800 sec is generally satisfactory but if light levels permit, faster is better.
In post capture I almost always need to crop substantially. Fortunately the FZ1000 has 20 Mpx to start with so cropping down even to 5 Mpx can produce quite acceptable results.
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| Brunnichs Guillemot. Difficult to photograph from a boat. They are only 40cm long and fly fast. |
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| I got a low keeper rate with the arctic terns, they are such aerial gymnasts. It was breeding season and the terns were busy trying to peck us on the head. They have been filmed driving off a polar bear, testament to the effectiveness of their defense of the eggs which are laid on the ground without a nest. |
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