When you’re doing bird photography, lots of photographers tend to more or less become brainless. Lots shoot in aperture priority and raise the ISO up to a suitable level to keep the shutter speeds high. Others will shoot in program mode or in bird mode. Sure, I’ve seen some folks shoot in shutter priority too. But that’s a pretty rare occurrence. And with just how fast of an aperture so many lenses have these days, people forget the one thing that can really help them out.
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The tip: stop the lens down. If you get a really high end, constant aperture zoom lens for birding, it will be so simple to forget to control your aperture and to just keep it where it is. So stop the lens down. Stopping the lens down will do so much more for your photos:
- It will make the bird stand out more by making it sharper
- It will give your photo more depth of field to ensure the bird is in focus
- It will make the shots easier to get
Just because you’ve got a fast aperture lens doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stop it down. In fact, this applies to more than just bird photography. I own the Canon RF 50mm f1.2 L lens, and I stop that lens down whenever I tend to use it. It’s important to do this because otherwise, it may be tough to get a subject in focus when I’m shooting an event or something.
This is especially the case if you want to do post-production of some sort to your photos. In fact, it will probably mean that you don’t need to do as much because the sharpness and clarity are bound to be enough.
If you’re shooting with APS-C or Micro Four Thirds cameras, don’t stop the lens down as much because depending on the aperture, the image may get softer. In fact, some Micro Four Thirds lenses have a maximum aperture of f4 — which is basically f8 in full-frame speak. If you stop ot down much further, you’ll probably lose image quality.