Shutter Speed Tips for Stunning Bird Shots
Controlling the camera’s shutter speed for specific effects
Bill Harris
December 16, 2024
Note: This tip comes from the photography case study #5 ‘Shutter Speed Control’ inside Photzy’s - 5 Extended Case-Studies on Bird Photography
Shutter speed control is an essential skill for the bird photographer. The knowledge must extend beyond simply what a shutter is and does to how to nuance the shutter speed depending upon the subject speed and the direction of travel, as well as coordinating with the aperture for a proper depth of field window.
Photograph by Ariana Prestes - If you study this photograph, you will see that some birds are sharply focused while others are blurred.
The perspective indicates that the lens used was likely in the range of 50mm to 100mm.
No panning technique was used, as we don’t see the motion blur of a pan.
Given the mix of sharp to non-sharp birds, the shutter speed was likely around 1/125th to 180th of a second.
Photograph by Ariana Prestes and Graphics by Kent DuFault
The sharpest moving birds fall within the red circles.
The red arrows indicate the sharply focused birds on the ground (little to no movement).
The yellow lines indicate the depth of field window.
This shot turned out pretty well. The flying birds in focus were in a good location relative to the entire frame and had the best separation from the background.
Tip #1 - The critical point here is that when you have a flock of birds flying together, they will generally travel at different speeds or directions. This will affect your choice of shutter speed, aperture, and potentially the ISO setting.
If the photographer had wanted all of this flock to be sharp, it would have required a faster shutter speed and a smaller aperture (to increase the DOF window), which would have required a higher ISO setting (most likely).
Photograph by Pexels - In this example, these geese are all flying in the same direction and likely at almost the same speed.
This is an issue of depth of field, as geese fly in a spread pattern, and the lens focal length used was an extreme telephoto at a minimum aperture.
Tip #2 - Shutter speed alone will only partially dictate how sharp your bird photograph will be, especially when photographing flocks.
Photograph Left by Pexels and Right by Unsplash/Javardh
When choosing a shutter speed for bird photography, you have two important considerations:
The speed at which the bird is traveling.
The direction the bird is traveling relative to the camera position.
Photograph Left by Pexels and Right by Unsplash/Javardh – Graphics by Kent DuFault
Tip #3 - The wing speed of a pigeon will be much slower than the wing speed of a hummingbird. A shutter speed of 1/125th to 1/200th might freeze the action of a pigeon’s wings. A hummingbird would likely require a shutter speed of 1/2000th or faster.
Tip #4 - A bird flying straight at the camera can be frozen in action with a slower shutter speed than needed for a bird flying perpendicular (or at any angle) to the camera.
Want more? If you want to learn more about bird photography, and capture beautiful shots of your own, we recommend downloading and printing out Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets (Special bonus available now!)