Another fun visit to Haycock Point in beautiful Beowa National Park (formerly Ben Boyd National Park). It could well be the Eastern Whipbird capital of Australia, it's not uncommon to sight a dozen Whipbirds running around.
500mm, f7.1, ISO 5000, 1/1600th sec.
A bright and sunny day made photographing fast-moving birds a little more tricky with a lot of contrast between the sun-filled open spaces and the dark beneath the trees - where the whipbirds like to ferret around for bugs!
I rely on changing my settings pretty fast on full manual, but I should probably take the smarter option of shooting on shutter speed priority, set to 1/2000th second. It's a pretty fast shutter speed that should do the job for the zippy Whipbirds and any wrens that are bobbing around.
My usual work flow is to set my aperture to f7.1, and then set my ISO depending on the light conditions to get up to a high enough shutter speed for the type of birds I'm photographing.
I do lose a stop or two if it's really dark and will shoot on f5.6, but I find f7.1 to be a sweet spot.
500mm, f7.1, ISO 4000, 1/3200th sec.
And it was pretty dark under the trees, where the birds tend to be, so I shot mostly on ISO 5000. I did dial it down to 2000 when I walked up to where the heath was lower and I was shooting only in brighter light. Those wrens sure move fast!
Whipbirds and wrens are both quite quite fast with limited opportunities to shoot as they flit under the foliage, so having a fast shutter speed helps.
500mm, f7.1, ISO 2500, 1/5000th sec.
My focus pointer was set to the small square, which helps to get my focus locked on subjects through fine branches and the like.
As my way of quickly changing settings is to adjust my shutter speed very quickly with the dial when I point on a subject, I can end up 'overshooting' the shutter speed, as I did in this wren photo above.
I really didn't need to as fast as 1/5000th when my little guy was stationary. But a few seconds later I was shooting under the trees and quickly dialled down to adjust my exposure. There's usually just not enough time to adjust all 3 settings, so I use my shutter speed as the 'hinge' as I move around to adjust for exposure once I have set aperture and ISO.
Another Wren, this time in the shade - look at the difference in shutter speed under those trees! From 1/5000th all the way down to 1/400th - and that's after moving my ISO back up to 5000. Lucky for me this one stayed relatively still and posed nicely.
500mm, f7.1, ISO 5000, 1/400th sec.
Partly cloudy and overcast days do make life a lot easier and dampen down that high contrast which can be hard to deal with. In Lightroom, sliding the contrast down - at least a little bit - is just about my first editing port'o'call.
This shot was a real horror of exposure, as I was shooting almost into midday sun and these two were way up high as well....definitely not a good quality shot, but it's passable (due to the extremely cute subject matter!) thanks to Lightroom.
500mm, f7.1, ISO 2500, 1/400th sec.
Cropped for Instagram with a twigs removed:
The editing goal was to even out the light by dropping down the contrast, brightening the shadows and trimming back the highlights as much as possible without creating artefacts.
In these circumstances, I exposed for the birds, which blows the sky out...but it's impossible to avoid in this case. If I could have moved to another spot to take the shot I would have.
Here's the original unedited shot for comparison:
If you'd like to visit Haycock sometime drop me a line! I live nearby, I'd be happy to show you around.
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