Thread: Birds photos with a kit lens

Great Horned Owl on a gorgeous day in San Giovanni in Persiceto, Bologna.
Lens: 18-200 at 200mm



Pair of Zebra Doves nesting in car porch.
Lens 70-300 at 195mm

At Silverston out from Brokenhill
Some of these blokes are clever.

A piece of ART

Kaye and I are currently in Alice Springs after touring around the centre for the past few weeks. Lake Eyre has water in it as do a lot of creeks and waterholes. Consequently the bird life is prolific. Aah to have a dedicated 'bird' camera with a ridiculously long lens and image stabilisation.............. Anyhow heres a few bird shots that did turn out OK. The kite shot was taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5700, the rest with a Nikon D80. The galah and kite shots were taken by me the egret and finches by Kaye.

Galah at Muloorina waterhole, near Maree SA.



Great Egret also at Muloorina Waterhole



Zebra Finches at Old Andado Station near Mt Dare NT



Whisteling Kite Birdsville Qld



The kites a bit 'soft' but I still like it.

One of the goals of this holiday is to come home with 12 good bird shots to create a calendar for next year. We've done this before and sent them out instead of Christmas cards. It's a fair bit of work but worth it in the end. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to take 12 good bird shots.

It's off to the Kimberley from here so hopefully we'll get them.

Kaye & Deano

Originally Posted by Numpty's Missus

The birds are still a bit wary of us, but finally found the bird feeder this visit to our country house

NM I was just looking at your Galah picture and noticed that the bird off to the right is the only sharp one. Did you focus on this guy and the recompose the shot? other wise I would say you focus point is not set to center. they can be changed to a number of different points but if you haven't locked it then you may of accidentally moved the focus point. of course you may of moved it yourself and meant for the shot to be like that. I just thought I would check

And I was wondering, NM, why you haven't turned your bird feeder into an oil-burning shed heater? Looks like a perfect candidate.

Watch out, Ron's up your way shortly.

Originally Posted by Numpty's Missus

DB...I think I did focus on one bird.

The shots were taken late in the afternoon with very low light so on slow speed, hand held. I have the camera on auto focus and for some reason it kept wanting to refocus, so I focused on one bird rather than try to get all in focus (maybe a depth of field thing?).

The white cockies weren't so sure of us so I shot the pics through the kitchen window

Still learning.......

I found the "missing" camera mount for our old tripod, and now have a remote, but have yet to get out and play with them

if you focused just on that bird to the right NM it would of been much more to the centre of the shot, unless you recomposed the shot. as you have to point it at the bird to get it to focus...if you have your focal point set to centre then you would of point straight at it...So unless you looked at that bird half hit the shutter and looked back to the centre of them all and fully pressed releasing the shutter I don't see how you could of got that shot unless your focal point was set to the right.

Its not a critisim........by any shape or form. just if your unaware of the focal points it something that can be played with but if you forget about them can really ruin a shot

For me it is impossible to get a sharp hand held bird photo at shutter speeds less than 1/250.
For birds generally I set my camera at Shutter speed priority and play with the ISO setting to get the proper exposure.