best settings to shoot birds on fly using D 7000

<p>kindly tell me the suitable settings like (af-s,af-A,AF-C) and other suitable settings on D 7000 to shoot birds on fly....</p><div></div>

<p>It depends on a variety of factors, such as: your distance from the birds and their size; the focal length and aperture of the lens you are using; whether you are trying to fill the frame with the birds or have them occupy only a small portion of the frame; the image you are attempting to achieve (such as blurred motion, or perfectly sharp); whether or not you are using a tripod or gimbal mount or shooting handheld; etc. If you can provide more specifics people can better assist you. </p>

<p>mainly hand held shot using moderately slow lense like 80-400 .f 5.6 .using higher speeds and iso to freeze the motion.i dont know exactly which mode to track the bird on focus . some times i am using old srew drive type 70-300 LENSE also</p>

<p>AF-C (continuous) for sure, 3D if the background is simple (sky) and bird is easily distinguishable from it. Otherwise I use AF-C 21 points.<br>

The key is the available light. You need a fast shutter speed and to bump the ISO if the light is poor. A gimbal type head is useful but shooting birds in flight from a tripod is not always convenient especially if they are at close range.<br>

I always shoot in Manual or Aperture priority mode.</p>

<p>Ah that helps. There are two schools of thought on this. The first (and probably the most practical and prevalent) would say use AF-C, because your focus will track the moving birds, assuming they're not moving too fast, and keep them in focus. The second school of thought suggests using AF-S (single focus) (or even manual focus for the more experienced shooters), panning your camera slightly leading the subject until it is where you want to snap the shot, then pressing the trigger - this one requires better coordination and reflexes, but is a good skill to learn so that you have more keepers in the long run. The attached shot was of a small Kildeer which had taken up residence nearby, shot handheld.</p><div></div>

<p>Nazir, that sample shot you posted wasn't bad, but it's loaded luminance and chrominance noise.</p>

<p>The bird was strongly backlit against a clear blue sky. The situation demanded some +EV to get the under-wing shadows up a little. If you shot in aperture priority, you needed around +1EV. Another choice would be to meter off the sky in manual mode, but not into the sun.</p>

<p>I prefer single-point AF or single-point expanded. If you use all the AF points, then almost invariably an AF point will grab a wing or something that you don't want, so keep it simple and shoot for the eye. (Don't even think about manual focus. Our modern cameras are NOT designed for MF and you'll just waste bits and bytes). You need the AF tracking mode on for BIF.</p>

<p>My default ISO is 800 for BIF, but you have a clear sky, so I'd drop down to ISO 400, but try to keep the SS up at 1/1000 or higher, in general.</p>

<p>I'm guessing that you shot in Raw and then applied almost no NR. I think you raised the under-wing shadows in Raw conversion. Maybe you underexposed and raised the whole image's level, which would aggravate noise. Anyway, something's going on that accentuates your noise. Either you're under exposing or not using enough NR in Raw conversion or you shot this as a JPEG with NR turned off.</p>

<p>My starting settings for BIF: (I hope I got all of the custom settings numbered right as I based these on my D 610. )<br>

Aperture Priority Mode<br>

Matrix metering<br>

Autofocus Mode--AF-C, high speed<br>

AF-Area Mode—Dynamic Area AF, 9 point as a starting point. Never AF-A.<br>

39 point dynamic area AF when there are lots of birds in the frame<br>

Select the focus point and lock it in<br>

Make sure Control panel shows the correct symbol, not the black rectangle.<br>

EV +1.0 (starting point when shooting against the sky)<br>

A1—AF-C priority selection set to Release<br>

A2- AF-S priority selection set to Focus, although I expect to shoot landscapes in AF-C to avoid changing back and forth between AF-S and AF-C. That’s why I use rear button focusing.<br>

A3—Focus tracking with lock on set to normal or short. Sometimes Off. You might have to experiment with this setting based upon backgrounds behind the birds.<br>

A4—Focus Point illumination. Set to On<br>

A6—Number of focus points set to 39. See if it works. <br>

C2-Standby timer. Set at 4 sec.<br>

D1—Beep set Off.<br>

D2-grid-set to On<br>

D5-CL shooting speed-set 3fps<br>

D9—LCD Illumination. Set at Off.<br>

F4—Assign AE-L/AF-L Button to AF-ON. Shutter button cannot be used to trigger AF. This is rear button focusing. This means your shutter button only triggers the shutter and VR.<br>

Set Auto ISO from the Shooting Menu. Set base at 200, max at 1600, and minimum shutter speed of 1/800 --1/1000 and see what happens. Make adjustments as needed.<br>

To prevent widest aperture from being used, set the minimum or desired aperture using the wheel.<br>

Turn VR off and see what happens.<br>

Set NEF bit depth to 14 , lossless compressed and see how the buffer handles 5.5 fps. Use fast read cards-- 90 MB/s--very important to allow buffer to fill and clear quickly.<br>

Joe Smith</p>

<p>39 AF points will NOT reliably work. It'll grab the wrong part of the bird, right when it matters most. Set to single-point or single-point expanded and aim for the head area. Don't turn VR off, even though your shutter speeds may be up over 1/1000-sec. Don't make it too complicated, as some might tend to do.</p>

<p><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8371/8352151520_84725d694a_c_d.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>This question has been asked and answered quite frequent; please do search for similar threads. Joseph's settings sound about right.<br>

The older 70-300 lenses (f/4-5.6G or f/4-5.6D) are too slow to track motion, their AF speed really isn't up to the task. The older 80-400VR also isn't known to be very fast to focus - so even with the right settings, your lenses may hold you back a lot.<br>

__</p>

<blockquote>

<p>39 AF points will NOT reliably work. It'll grab the wrong part of the bird, right when it matters most.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The setting refered to does not mean the camera will "decide" where to focus using all 39 points at the same time, but instead how many of the points will be considered for tracking movement. So, it can reliably work if you use Dynamic single-point Continuous AF; it's more a problem of speed because it slows down tracking.</p>

<p>friends..these are very valuable new informations to me...thanks and regards to all of you.the sample shot was only a jpeg .post processing simple sharpening and contrast enhancing using default picture manager from microsoft.no noice removal.shutter 8000/ f 10/iso 2000. lense was 70-300 screw driven old type.</p><div></div>

<p>steve..thanks for sharing your nice images</p>

<p>Nazir, ISO 2000, with your older generation camera is what caused all that noise. Better settings would have been ISO 800 or maybe even ISO 400 and a much slower SS. For these slow moving birds 1/1000-sec. would have been plenty fast and anything between 1/800 and 1/2000-sec, would be your aim. 1/8000-sec. is up against the stops.</p>

<p>If you're going to use in-camera JPEGs, then make sure than in-camera NR is turned on.</p>

<p>Wouter's additional comments are spot on. All of this tech stuff for AF settings is very complicated and not well explained in any Nikon camera manual. And many Nikon nature pros do not agree on the "best set" of settings because of other factors present like how fast the lenses are that you are using, backgrounds and lighting present, etc. Check out the Internet to see what others say, like Brad Hill's blog. He is a nature pro that writes about his experiences with his Nikon equipment. <br>

Joe Smith</p>

<p>thanks a lot ...joseph, david ...this forum is great</p>

<p>nazir, in addition to all the good advice for camera settings, remember to pan your camera in the direction the bird is heading. You must try and match your pan speed to the birds flight speed. </p><div></div>

<p>I agree with keeping things simple. I use a D300 and the 80-400 Nikon zoom(the old one), which takes some practice. You should pre-focus in the area that the shot will happen. I use a single point AF and Aperture Priority. Get used to following the bird like hunting, but with the camera.<br>

The 80-400 is a slow compromise...financially, and seems to give the best results at f8, so you need a lot of light.<br>

Focus on the head, and particularly the eye, which must be crisp. Keep the iso as low as you can go for the light.<br>

This blue heron was shot at iso 640, f8, 1/1250 sec at 400 mm.<br>

Practicing this is great fun, but takes time and patience.</p><div></div>