In this wildlife photography tutorial, I go over how to photograph small birds in the wild.
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Favorite Wildlife lens for the price: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LNSAYJ4?ie=UTF8&tag=lightbender06-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B01LNSAYJ4
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My Favorite All-around Tripod:
My Filters
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Try it before you buy it! I use LensRentals every time I want to test something out, or just need to rent something that I don’t have for a shoot or trip:
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Original source
33 responses to “Wildlife Photography Tutorial: How To Photograph Small Birds”
Who else has some good birding tips for me (and everyone else on here)?
How do you get them without them flying off.
Easy in the stupid leaves. LoL
Nice
Nice video. How much do you crop? 50 percent, 75 %? Even with a 600mm lens, a small songbird is a tiny portion of the frame. I'm sometimes cropping my 24 MP down to 4 or 5. How bout you?
Great
can i use a 70-200mm lens to shoot birds .
Great advice i was basically agreeing with everything you were saying:)
Beautiful photographs, thank you so much!
Great video and very helpful, thank you Brent
I spent a while this morning attempting to get a good shot of a Carolina Chickadee but was not successful due to their flighty nature. I wasn't sure of what settings might be best so I came here to watch your video again. Thanks for posting your personal setting likes as it really helps others like myself. Glad you mentioned EBird.com as it is a great resource.
Thank you for the video! Definitly learned alot.
Thanks for the tips. I Love your enthusiasm for the birds.
Great video. Are you using a 400mm lens or 200 mm lens? Thanks a lot!
Lots of good advice here, thanks. I just wish we had the same variety of colourful birds here in the UK.
Thanks. Great tips!
Very good information!
what lens do you have?
I just found your channel, looks like good content! I have been shooting birds for about 6 years but 99.9% of my shots were big birds of prey, I got a new lens and was doing some test shots in my yard before going out in the field..I took a few shots of sparrows and song birds and to my surprise I did not realize how beautiful the small birds are when you get a good shot and can see them still and up close, even the common sparrow has awesome colors on its head and from a distance they look like a brown bird but are actually quite colorful..So this year im spending more time on the small birds!!! Good video btw!
10:42 just like me!!!
Hello Brent, I've been watching (and enjoying) your wildlife tutorials and just wanted to add a brief tidbit of clarification for your viewers. eBird, All About Birds, and Merlin are all resources developed and maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (Cornell University). Merlin is the mobile app version of All About Birds, and eBird is available both as a website and companion app. I've really enjoyed your explanations, insight, and tips and look forward to viewing your other videos. thank you for sharing!
Thanks, this was a good video. I didn't know about the websites you mentioned.
It's December now and there just aren't a lot of birds anywhere in the US. Can't wait for spring.
tq its wonderful information
Continous AF or single AF?
beautiful photos , I'm just starting out with bird watching and on a look out for a decent camera. any tips on a really good camera please
very informative…thanks for sharing your knowledge….what focal length lens you are using on your full frame camera?
Some good tips 👍🏻 I use some of the same practices . Gem
uowwww!!! tks! great shots!
Great video and excellent tips Brent, hope I can contribute. All of my bird/wildlife images are taken in the northeast of the uk where good light can be a bit of a problem even in summer! my basic settings are ap priority wide open, depends where I'm at if in the open I start my ISO at 800, obviously if its bright I reduce this in shade It's increased, good gear is a massive help I shoot with the Canon 500 f4 mk2 lens and camera is the Canon 5dsr and please do not take notice of people saying this is just a landscape camera believe me this camera is great for bird photography, if you want to check out my images hope this proves this, I am frank5426 on flickr
Beautiful video Brent! I love to make videos of birds also. Please check out my channel if you want.
Very helpful tips Brent. One point though when you up the exposure compensation when there is adequate amount of natural light, will some of the brighter colours in smaller birds especially orange, yellow and light blue get over exposed….or do you keep adjusting the exposure compensation for every shot if required. Additionally do you keep the AF tracking towards the Locked On position rather than Responsive. Thanks again for the knowledge sharing.
Very inspiring and helpful. Amazing photos also.
Really nice to watch. Thank you.
FYI:
My mobile is a Pixel 4XL. It has a great camera function. Shoot at any bird (or other), instead of pressing the capture button, click "more", then "lens", and a pic of what you are aiming at comes up, click, and it tells you the name of the bird and everything you ever wanted to know about it. I will shoot a pic on my Sony A7R3 and aim my mobile at the camera back and do this and it tells me the name of the bird. It really wow's people when I show them. Not many people know about this function. I think this will work on any recent Pixel phones. So if you're out and want to know the name of a bird, you don't have to pull open an app and drill down finding pics of it. It's instant and I'm glad I could share!