A Few Thoughts on Exposure in Bird Photography

^{Note: This tip comes from page 8-9 in Tobie Schalkwyk’s free eBook - Bird Photography: Exposures, Angles and Viewpoints}

Keep the following tips in mind regarding exposure:

• White birds always tend to be overexposed, especially in bright sunlight. You may want to underexpose them a bit (by negative 0.3 – 1 f-stops). It’s easy to raise the highlights/ shadows/exposure a little on white birds in post-processing without blowing out your whites, especially when you’re shooting in the camera raw format (which you should be), but it’s nearly impossible to recover blown-out whites and highlights.

• Underexposed darker birds (in camera) tend to generate noise if you attempt to raise the shadows/exposure in post-processing. Rather, over-expose the shot slightly and then lower the shadows/exposure in post-processing. This usually has the added benefit of reducing possible noise that was generated.

• If in doubt, just try to have your exposure more or less on target. As long as you’re reasonably close to the center of your camera’s dynamic range, you should be able to recover highlights or shadows successfully in post-processing.

• Bird photography lends itself more toward shooting in the bright sun than any other genre, but it’s still not your best friend in some instances. If you get a day when a thin layer of clouds covers the sky, grab your gear for a bird shoot! You’ll never have a better diffuser of sunlight for bird photography!

• On sunny days, your best shots will come from the early morning hours (before 10 am) and in the late afternoons (after 4 pm) because of the softer sunlight created by the angle of the sun to the earth. I love to arrive at my planned venue for a shoot at about 6 am. It’s sometimes too dark to take useful shots at that hour, but what’s wrong with enjoying the sounds and looks of nature as you settle in to wait for the light to increase? Perhaps carry a flask of hot coffee to pass the time?

• Remember that the focal length adjustment on a zoom lens might close your aperture slightly if you have it wide open, resulting in underexposure. For example, if you’ve selected f/5 for a lens with an ‘f5-6.3’ specification, the setting will automatically change to f/6.3 as you zoom in fully on your subject. You’ll have to adjust your shutter speed or ISO in order to keep the same exposure level!

• Being on the ‘shadow’ side of a bird is not the end of the world, especially with a relatively static bird. Expose for the shaded section and use rim light and/or wind to create an artistic effect.

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!)