Unlock Perfect Shots: Master Exposure Settings for Stunning Bird Photography
Camera meter settings to achieve proper exposure and why
Bill Harris
June 23, 2024
Note: This tip comes from page 4-5 in Tobie Schalkwyk’s free eBook - Bird Photography: Exposures, Angles and Viewpoints
Photograph by Ezgi Bulut
Picture this: you see this beautiful bird in flight. Perfect! It flies straight to you – even better! You’ve never photographed this species before, so you battle to control your excitement as you feverishly set the exposure perfectly. Shutter speed: check. Aperture: check. ISO: check.
The exposure ruler in your viewfinder confirms the fact that you’re spot on! As you keep your finger on the shutter release button in continuous shooting mode, you can already imagine the ‘oohs and ‘ahs’ of your social media friends, and you picture the ‘Like’ count shooting up to record highs!
At home, you rush to your laptop and can’t wait for the photo import to finish. Then, disaster! You’re looking at a set of perfect silhouettes! You cannot control your disappointment and disbelief as you try to salvage what you can by adjusting the Shadows and Darks sliders of your post-processing package! But not even the fact that you’ve shot your images in RAW is enough to help you out.
Tip #1 – Exposure is a crucial element of bird photography. It is also extremely tricky as birds move through the environment, and the lighting changes constantly.
Photograph by Bakari Mustafa – By placing the spot metering onto the bird’s body, detail was captured in the bird’s dark feathers.
So, what went wrong? It could be one of a few things, but the most common culprit is metering. Your camera advised you to set your exposure based on the total scene. The problem is that most of the scenes are comprised of bright sky and/or white clouds, so your darker bird is given minimal priority as your camera makes its exposure recommendations for you. What, then, is the solution?
Tip #2 – In about 90% of all bird photography situations you will want your camera metering system to be set at Spot. Then when creating pictures, you place that spot right onto the body of the bird.
Photograph by Karl Callwood – This scene represents an example where setting your camera meter to center-weighted or matrix would yield better results than the spot setting.
Tip #3 – When confronted with a scene that has similar tonality across the entire frame, you would switch the metering to center-weighted or matrix.
Photograph by Morgane Perraud – The environment here was quite dark, with spotty areas of bright light. Using the matrix setting overexposed - causing a loss of detail in the bird’s bright white feathers.
Tip #4 – Remember, the bird is your subject, not the background. When confronted with spotty contrasty lighting, use the spot setting and place it on the bird.
Photograph by Lenstraveler – The center-weighted meter setting saved this picture from a severe exposure problem. Enough detail was captured on both ends of the histogram that post-processing can help bring out a great shot.
Photograph by Mathew Schwartz
The meter was properly set, which resulted in this excellent bird portrait with full detail, from highlights to shadows.
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!)