20d Autofocus'n bids quickly moving toward you

[cliff46]

Not having shot lots of flying birds I'm having great difficulty shooting flying birds that are flying directly towards me. My camera is a 20d and the lense 100-400 IS. Either I'm doing something wrong (very good chance of this) or the 20d has difficulty focusing on fast moving targets move directly at the camera?

Any suggestions on how to increase my % of hits?

Thanks,

Cliff Leonard

[malla1962]

hi cliff,i have the same setup as you are using.are you using a1 servo and the centre focusing point?what i find is if there is anything else around for it to focus on and you are not bang on the subject it will start hunting.if the bird is far away spin the focus ring to infinity before auto focusing.thats what i did at a airshow and got my best results.

[malla1962]

shot this one 2 weeks ago.

[Rob612]

The trick is to use AI Servo and the center focus point, then the camera will do the rest. It can be done, even with birds that fly directly towards you, but sure is a challenging issue. You have to shoot in sequence and somehow "hope for the best".


Here's one I took recently

http://www.digitalpics.it/forumlnk/raptor1.jpg

[dhbailey]

Another factor which makes shooting moving birds more difficult is the IS -- use the old rule-of-thumb where your shutter speed is faster than your focal length and turn IS off.

Then use AI-servo and burst mode so you can get a lot of shots off quickly.

[cliff46]

Thank you all for the help.

Cliff Leonard