Longer or shorter lens for smaller birds ?

I keep hearing theres no excuse for not having longer lenses for birds, but for smaller birds i wonder If thats not going in the wrong direction. I would think a lighter setup would be best. Now I'm talking for birds in flight where being able to quickly change direction is key.
Would say a 200mm lens be a better choice for something like this ? A 300 2.8 might be OK , but its a heavy lens at least compared to some. Maybe a 5DIII and a lighter lens would be better suited than my 1DMKIV and 100-400V2, which takes great images of smaller perched birds, but struggles a bit trying to keep up with smaller birds.

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Bsmooth wrote in post #18280517
I keep hearing theres no excuse for not having longer lenses for birds, but for smaller birds i wonder If thats not going in the wrong direction. I would think a lighter setup would be best. Now I'm talking for birds in flight where being able to quickly change direction is key.
Would say a 200mm lens be a better choice for something like this ? A 300 2.8 might be OK , but its a heavy lens at least compared to some. Maybe a 5DIII and a lighter lens would be better suited than my 1DMKIV and 100-400V2, which takes great images of smaller perched birds, but struggles a bit trying to keep up with smaller birds.

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200mm - for small birds, in flight? Hmmmmmm. That makes me wonder what kind of photos you are wanting to take. It seems to me like a 200mm lens, with small birds in flight, would result in images in which the birds are very small in the frame........with such a short lens, I don't see how you would be able to capture any of the rich feather detail and plumage texture that most of us are looking to capture when we photograph birds in flight.

I just don't see this working. At all. Unless you have the camera at a set-up, and are pre-focused and fire it remotely. That would be a different situation entirely, and in those cases a short lens can provide wonderful results.

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I could see a shorter lens being useful if you were closer to the action and they were all overhead, where you had to swing the camera around quite a bit to follow them. However, if you are going to stay at the same types of distances as with a long lens, then I would think the amount of cropping would be detrimental to the final result.

What type of AF mode are you using with the 100-400? Perhaps you just need to use a different case, or tweak one of the settings on your current case.

I can see the logic, smaller birds closer in needs fast movement so a smaller lens, but hand on heart, they'd be moving so quickly that close in, you'd never focus on them!! Maybe 50mm prefocused to 8m with f16 1/500, they'd be in shot, and on focus, but very small and noisy

Personally, I think you've got a great lens (and camera) to capture small birds (i.e. songbirds) in flight. I'm not familiar with the AF speed of the 1DMKIV. I suspect it would do very well, but I just don't know. The 5D3, at only 6 fps, isn't the best for BIF. A 7D2 or 1DX would be better due to more fps.

If you want to test a different focal length, just lock that zoom at 200mm and see if you're able to get close enough to capture a decent size image to your liking.

Just some quick math using a field of view calculator; Subject (song sparrow) has a wingspan of 8 inches. Field of view width goal 3 times subject size. In the case of song sparrow, 2 feet. camera sensor is 1". distance to subject is 30 feet. Entered into calculator results in a 192 mm focal length.
https://www.pelco.com …ld-of-view-calculator-fov

The canon 400 f/5.6 is a little lighter than your lens and extremely sharp. I just don't know if it would be any better than your current lens.

I would say if you can get within a couple of feet of the birds and have reflexes of a beast trying to keep them in the frame then by all means try it but for me personally I wouldn't attempt it...I've tried and the ones I got in focus were pure luck but they were few and far between.

I photograph Hummingbirds with a 400mm and 500mm lens and they are hard enough to keep in the frame even using a tripod and I'm at 11'-15' from them...I couldn't imagine trying to be within 2'-4' from them...unless they were tame birds.

Captured hummingbirds are much easier to take photos of! It seems once a year, one gets stuck in our garage, and we have to use a butterfly net to catch them.

Longer lens and a longer working distance will make your tracking a lot easier than a shorter lens and shorter working distance. Your arc of travel to track birds is shallower/slower the farther out you are.

Alan Murphy does a lot of songbird photography and does workshops on photographing migratory birds (in Texas I think) and I have seen a video or two he's made photographing them even in flight. Maybe search on here or on Youtube to see how he does his set-ups photographing the smaller birds.

The only reason I was thinking a smaller lens was to gain some depth of field. With a 400 its minuscule at best, but looking at the online depth of field calculator, with a smaller 200 lens I can get up to 1.5 feet, but with a 400 I only get .37 feet , but thats at a distance of 20 feet from the bird.
I'm having no luck trying to AF with the smaller birds, the camera and lens just cannot keep up, so I've been trying zone focusing and spraying away, with little results to show for it, plus a smaller lens will be able to be able to move around.
I've been really surprised how close smaller birds come to you especially when people leave seed around.
I also tried using a tripod with slightly better results, but with the icy trails around, just carrying it around isn't what i would call fun by any means.

here's a good read. http://mikeatkinson.ne​t …phing-Birds-in-Flight.htm

I think the points that were made though that with a longer lens, and greater distance, you can still increase your DOF while also reducing the amount of "tracking" you have to perform. The farther out you are, the more distance you can cover in the air with the slightest movements of the lens. If a bird covers 10m/32ft in the air, you may only have to move 80cm/32in. The closer you are, the greater you will have have that lens travel to track, and the more difficult it becomes as well.

So for your 400mm example, double your distance back to 40' and you have roughly the same DOF as the 200mm at 20', but you will also be able to track the bird easier at the same time, and have the same sized subject in your image. This is probably one of the reasons fast long lenses are in so much demand by wildlife shooters.

Yep read that Mike Atkinson article a few times, and countless others as well. The conclusion I'm coming to is smaller birds are very hard to shoot, probably one of the hardest matter of fact. That doesn't put me off, but I think AF just can't keep up, except possibly in the open sky, which in truth makes a pretty boring image.
I took a look at Alan Murphy and Brian Smalls sites and there images are pretty impressive, but a lot of Alans are pretty much all set up ahead of time, so there not what i would call natural shots. There great images, don't get me wrong, but still a bit contrived for my tastes anyways.
I'm not saying you don't have to have certain info ahead of time like direction of light and wind, although so far direction of wind doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference with smaller birds.
I've planned a number of shot counting on them to stake off into the wind and wouldn't you know they went the other way.
BTW the reason I was looking for more Depth of field was to give me that little extra chance of getting the whole bird in focus, with the 400 depth of field is very small, especially with the close distances I am dealing with.

Bsmooth wrote in post #18281363
The only reason I was thinking a smaller lens was to gain some depth of field. With a 400 its minuscule at best, but looking at the online depth of field calculator, with a smaller 200 lens I can get up to 1.5 feet, but with a 400 I only get .37 feet , but thats at a distance of 20 feet from the bird.
I'm having no luck trying to AF with the smaller birds, the camera and lens just cannot keep up, so I've been trying zone focusing and spraying away, with little results to show for it, plus a smaller lens will be able to be able to move around.
I've been really surprised how close smaller birds come to you especially when people leave seed around.
I also tried using a tripod with slightly better results, but with the icy trails around, just carrying it around isn't what i would call fun by any means.

You might have a larger DoF, but the birds will be SO much smaller in the frame that you're going to have to crop heavier and lose more detail. This is an uncropped image of a small bird, at 400mm (using a 7DII) and about 10-12 feet away. At 200mm you'd have half of that size in the frame and need to crop a lot more; magnify that by being out 20-50 feet (or more) for things on the wing, and you're just not going to have any data on the sensor to work with for any real amount of detail in those birds.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/E2A9​zM

Bsmooth wrote in post #18280517
I keep hearing theres no excuse for not having longer lenses for birds, but for smaller birds i wonder If thats not going in the wrong direction. I would think a lighter setup would be best. Now I'm talking for birds in flight where being able to quickly change direction is key.....

Bsmooth wrote in post #18281363
The only reason I was thinking a smaller lens was to gain some depth of field. ...

I'm having no luck trying to AF with the smaller birds, the camera and lens just cannot keep up, so I've been trying zone focusing and spraying away, with little results to show for it, plus a smaller lens will be able to be able to move around.....

Bsmooth wrote in post #18281630
....BTW the reason I was looking for more Depth of field was to give me that little extra chance of getting the whole bird in focus, with the 400 depth of field is very small, especially with the close distances I am dealing with.

Bruce,

Your reasoning for getting a shorter lens seems to have changed from your initial post. Regardless of your reasoning, if you want more DOF, you don't need a shorter lens, just stop down a bit. I'm sure you know that.

Regarding zone focusing, I think that will only hinder you. Use one single AF point or (slightly expanded center zone if your camera has it), set up your controls so your shutter doesn't fire until focus has been acquired, get on the bird while it's on the perch and track it when it flys. It won't be easy because smaller birds (I assume you mean song birds, but you haven't confirmed) undulate when they fly rather than stay on a predictd course. You knew that too.

Of the thousands of BIF shots I have taken and kept, only three are songbirds, but many of the waterfowl shots I've taken don't fill much more of the frame than the songbird image below. I shot that one below from my car at about 8 - 10 yards with 400mm, 1/8000 sec, f/5.6, 1250 iso. It's not flickr-worthy, but it shows that it can be done. Now go get them!