Birds against a Bright sky.

[scman]

How would one go about that. Every time I try the sky is bright and the bird is a dark shadow even when I spot focus on the birdy.

[Duane N]

Not sure what you mean exactly by a bright sky. Overcast? Mid-day sun?

I shoot in manual mode but if you use a program mode I would suspect your light meter would need to be 1-2 stops above center.

Example: 1/640" @ f/4, ISO 1250, manual mode. I basically blew out the sky which was overcast. In this type of situation you can't worry about the sky....something has got to give shooting in these conditions and unfortunately the sky gets the short end of the stick. These are not conditons I typically shoot in though so my suggestion might not be the best thing to do.

[scman]

Bright/ medium blue sunny sky. Usually sun is 30-60 degrees from the subject or behind me 10AM - 5PM

[scman]

I don't think I need to worry about the sky. Nice work. If my birds looked that nice I would be happy

[Keebert]

Birds against the sky always need some measure of exposure compensation to stop them being dark - of course, this will mean the sky is over exposed. Here's an example - the shot was exposed for the parrot with the trees behind but you can see that the sky is then over exposed leaving the upper parrot with bad fringing. Therein lies the challenge - exposing a dark subject (the bird) against a bright background (the sky) means that one will end up over or under exposed when the other is exposed correctly.

[jhayesvw]

Try spot metering.
It will expose for the focus point and let the rest blow out or be too dark but your bird (the subject) will be properly exposed.

[john29]

I think jhayesvw is right...
You should try spot metering....

[res]

I am similar to Duane, I shoot manual much of the time but I do use AV mode when just walking. I shoot between +1.5 - +2 compensation when shooting that way. I do watch my sun angle as much as possible and do everything I can to set myself up to get birds in front of me and the sun somewhat behind me.