I stumbled across a You Tube Channel hosted by Lee Hoy, a storied wildlife photographer, an OM System ambassador, and the most informed photographer I have encountered when it comes to the genre of wildlife photography. I have only scratched the surface of his advice dispensed with a great Texas draw.. I learned five things I will use going forward in my bird photography. 1) Don’t fear high ISO. 2) shoot in manual exposure mode and (most importantly) 3) to enhance focus accuracy and limit lens hunting, set up the camera’s focus range where one chooses, or where one anticipates the subject to be using the in-camera focus distance limiter (if the camera has that feature), or manually; and 4) shoot to fill the frame so minimal cropping is needed; and 5) use the histogram (and not the LCD screen) to evaluate the quality of exposure..
His advice brought to mind my recent experience shooting Osprey in Chatham Massachusetts. I was on a high veranda and the Osprey were flying directly at me and overhead, shooting with the technology packed OM System OM1 Mark II – a remarkable camera if used with skill and understanding. There was mid day sun, so the underside of the Osprey were shadowed. Choosing aperture priority was a BIG mistake, and I had no chance of getting good out of the camera images. The underside of the Osprey in my images were underexposed and full of noise that no post processing could rectify. I missed a great opportunity to get quality shots. What I learned from Lee Hoy is I should have used the minimum necessary high ISO for achieving shutter speed required to freeze action. I should have used the in-camera distance focus limiter to 25 – 150 feet or so. In manual mode I should have varied my shutter speed until I got exposures without clipped highlights on the Osprey.
This shot was taken with a Nikon D500. I rolled through the menu and it does not appear the unit has an in-camera focus limiter – I will double check this. I did use manual exposure. I believe I could have set a focus range using some buttons on the Nikon 500 PF (a remarkable lens),. I will read the manual to learn if my assumption is correct.
The bird population was few and far between, so I took only a few images of this black faced gull. I love capturing birds, and will keep trying to get better. The D500 remains a great wildlife camera, but the OM System features are very far ahead, once they are learned and become instinctual, smaller sensor be damned.
