Wildlife Photography Tips: Raptors (Part I)

Birds of prey - fierce, graceful, powerful, and fast - and very difficult to get great photos of in the wild. How many times have you tried to photograph an eagle or hawk in flight, only to look at the photo later and see a small, dark, out-of-focus blob on your image rather than the graceful bird you remember?

I can't tell you how many of those blurry photos I've taken over my lifetime!

These past two years in Maine have given me time and opportunity to hone my photography skills with birds of prey and I'd like to share some of the things I've learned. These tips have taken me from taking photos like this:

Very blurry image of an American Kestrel, Nikon D60 and manual focus 300 mm lens

Osprey on nest, taken with Nikon D60 and Tamron 500MM lens

To taking photos like this:

Osprey fishing, taken with Nikon D300S and Tamron 300mm lens

...in the space of just a few months! Granted, I had few distractions so I was able to devote many hours to  photography every week, but if you're patient with yourself and learn from both your successes and failures, you can make substantial progress in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Know What You Want

The first thing: know what you want to achieve with your wildlife photography. Do you want to derive an income from your work, either part-time or full-time? Do you want to be able to create large prints from your photos, or are you satisfied with small, low-res images for the web? Do you want to sell work to publications like National Geographic, or are you taking photos only to share them with friends and family?

My own immediate goal is to derive a portion of my income through wildlife photography via print sales, stock photos, and freelance work. 

Equipment

The answers to these questions will drive the decision as to the type of equipment you'll need. Without a doubt, most serious, professional, successful wildlife photographers are using some fairly high-end equipment. If this is what you want, you'll need a camera with a high resolution, capability to "burst" photos, one that works well in both low and high light conditions, and has a good selection of lenses available. Currently my workhorse camera is a Nikon D300S, and I rent a D3 as needed for really special shoots.

With your camera, get the fastest memory cards you can afford and get several if possible. My camera takes both CF (Compact Flash) and SDHC cards. I carry both - the CF because they are faster and SDHC as backup if the CF fills up. Fast memory cards come in handy when you use your camera's burst mode (taking several shots sequentially, for action photography) because each picture file you produce gets saved much quicker. This allows your camera to take photos more quickly.

You can get decent photos with point-and-shoot type of cameras that have high magnification capabilities...however, you're more likely to get more and better photos of birds with higher-end equipment. 

Lenses are also a consideration. For serious bird photography, my recommendation is to buy good lenses even if you have to purchase them used. Fixed-length lenses offer slightly crisper resolution than than zooms, but zooms are more convenient if you don't want to lug several heavy lenses around all day. Modern photo editing software is so advanced that you can overcome much of the difference in sharpness with just a pass or two through a sharpening filter.

That being said, my workhorse lens for raptor photography is a Tamron 200-500mm AF zoom. I purchased this used three years ago and have taken a few tens of thousands of photos with it. I also routinely rent higher-end lenses as needed  until I have the moolah to be able to purchase one for myself (Nikon makes some great super-tele lenses that work better than the Tamron in lower light conditions but at $10,000 or more, these are not currently in my budget).

Osprey taking off after a dive, Nikon D300S and Tamron 200-500mm AF zoom

I switched from a Nikon D60 to a D300s for several reasons, but mainly because the D300S is plain faster. It offers higher shutter speeds, "burst" photos for action sequences, a greater ISO range, better low-light capability, a larger image sensor, better focusing, and a higher resolution. I can also create images in RAW as well as JPEG, something the D60 could not do. The D300S offers two card slots, one for CF and the other for SDHC cards. Before switching, using my D60 was an exercise in frustration when trying to take action shots of any bird but particularly Osprey.

Next post: Finding raptors to photograph...coming soon...

Note: All text and photos are copyrighted by Nancy Rynes, 2012. Please feel free to link to this site, but do not copy contents or photos for ANY purpose without my written permission.