Trying to knit sand: using the 300D for BIF!

[Julian Mole]

Twelve months ago I got into bird photography, and after recently purchasing a 100-400 L lens I can not afford to upgrade my 300D for a newer camera with AI servo.

For birds in flight I initially tried using the 300D in the 'Sports' mode, but soon realised that all it produced were serverely underexposed images, and sadly this mode is fully automatic with no way to dial in exposure compensation.

So I decided I'd try the camera in Manual and Av/Tv modes to see how it would perform on flying Black Headed Gulls at the local river.

I used shutter speeds of 1/1000 or higher and tried to keep the aperture at 8.0 or above, adjusting the ISO as necessary. The IS on the lens was switched off and close focus was limited to 6.5m.

Well, I would like to say I was pleasantly surprised, but alas, the results were in line with what I expected; pretty poor. I managed to capture only a few dozen properly focused photos out of approximately 220, with only 5 of the closer range opportunities being captured in 'proper' focus.

After many attempts my ability to accurately and smoothly follow the birds in the viewfinder improved and I found regularly that the camera was letting me down, it would fail to gain focus on my half depressing the shutter button and therefore would prevent me from then taking a photo (with the lens in AF the camera only allows you to take a photo if a focus has been attained).
Very frustrating, luckily I kept my cool and didn't throw the camera in the river, even though I felt like it at times!

I also tried to get the AI servo to kick in by gaining focus and then zooming in or out as I followed the subject, as I had read somewhere that this worked, but it didn't work for me with the gulls.

Below are the 3 best photos I managed to take, all are full frame, resized to 1000x667 and with a 25% unsharp mask applied.

If anyone has any tips that might help me with BIF with this camera I would be glad to hear them, they might just keep me persevering until I can afford a used 20D! : )

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2457aresized.jpg

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2521resized.jpg

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2570aresized.jpg

[artyman]

BIF are difficult and I find things not much better with a 350D. Personally I find it easier with manual focus as trying to keep the traget under the central AF point is virtually impossible with most birds.

[cdifoto]

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/digital/digital_rebel_firmware_hack.html

Read that.

[Julian Mole]

Hi Cdifoto,

Thank you for your help, the link made me go back and look over the information on the firmware hacks again.

And after reading this page (http://www.digitalrebel.nl/firmware.html) I realised how to activate the AF mode switch, luckily for me the previous owner had installed this version of firmware hack on the camera. I then went outside to give it a go!

Using the 'left' button to fire the shutter, whilst holding down the actual shutter button to activate AI Servo, takes a little bit of getting used to!
Also it changed how I held the camera as you can no longer fully grip the camera with my thumb.

However with a little practice I managed to produce better results than yesterday with a larger number of photos in good focus, ...or close to focus.
This last point is significant, as apparently, as soon as you press the 'left' button to fire the shutter, the AI Servo stops tracking the object - and in this split second a fast moving bird has time to travel past the point of focus.

(Another contributing factor might be that the pushing of the left buton isn't always done as smoothly as I'd like. However I'm not sure whether with a shutter speed of 1/1000 or higher this would actually be a factor?)

Anyway here are four full frame photos from today, taken using the AI Servo method described above (the second two aren't brilliant, but they are good examples of the type of opportunities I always used to miss in the past).

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2665resized.jpg

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2708resized.jpg

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2710resized.jpg

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/Julian_Mole/CRW_2627resized.jpg

[gymell]

I started with a 300D, and it's definitely lacking for shooting BIF. The small buffer and slow AF makes it tough. All I can say is, keep working on your tracking skills - the practice will never hurt. Hopefully you'll be able to upgrade at some point, even a 30D would be a huge improvement (I speak from experience.)

[Julian Mole]

Hi Gymell,

Thanks for the encourgement - I shall stick with it until I can afford that upgrade! : )

[artyman]

Eh!!!

[Liam:]

If you are managing to get swallows in focus, it can't be that bad at focussing! I to went through the same situation of having a bad camera but good lens, one trick is to let go of the af button and then push it down again to see if you can get it to lock on.