Considerations For Choosing The Shutter Speed In Bird Photography

^{Note: This tip comes from the photography case study #5 ‘Shutter Speed’ inside Photzy’s - 5 Extended Case-Studies on Bird Photography}

There are many factors to consider when choosing a shutter speed in bird photography. The bird’s or birds’ movement rate must be weighed against the necessary depth of field.

In the above photograph, The sharpest moving birds fall within the red circles.

The red arrows indicate the sharply focused birds on the ground (they had little to no movement).

The yellow lines indicate the depth-of-field (DOF) window.

Quick Tip: The key point here is that when you have a flock of birds flying together, they will generally not travel at the same speed or in the same direction.

This will affect your choice of shutter speed, aperture, and potentially the ISO setting.

Quick Tip: 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.

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.

A bird flying straight toward the camera can be frozen in action with a slower shutter speed than what is needed for a bird flying at a perpendicular 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!)