Spring migration is in full swing in Alaska right now, amazing variety of birds moving through our area. A few days ago Cree and I went out searching for bird photos, and found amazing species including arctic terns, Hudsonian godwits, harlequin ducks, loons and even a surfbird (above). Not bad for a few hours of bird photography.
Probably the most exciting was the surfbird. These birds are hard to find, generally on some remote rocky island in Alaska feeding along the beach…I’ve only seen a handful of these birds in 40 years of birding. What was crazy was Cree and I were lying on ground photographing red necked grebes with our 800mm and 840mm (600mm w 1.4x) and this surfbird landed about eight feet away…too close for our lenses minimum focus distance. Eventually the surfbird starting feeding along the lake shore providing some nice images. Many times he stopped and perched for a few minutes. But I kept on shooting at 20FPS, the fastest my Z9 can shoot in RAW. Why keep shooting at such a fast frame rate? Two reasons…
First, you never know what wildlife is going to do. Even if a bird or animal seems static, in the blink of an eye it may change behavior or do something you have never seen before. You either get the shot or you don’t. Fast frame rates help you capture sudden behavior.
The second reason for fast frame rates is less obvious. Generally you are using a long lens to photograph wildlife, maybe a 600mm or longer. And motion at the camera is greatly amplified through the telephoto lens. When you press the shutter, you bump the camera ever so slightly…even on a tripod. This is especially obvious using slower shutter speeds. If you are shooting a 20 FPS, you may see the first few frames in a burst are soft, but the middle frames are sharp. The middle of the burst is where the motion of hitting the shutter has stopped. In other words, you often get sharper photos if you shoot at 20 fps since the later frames in the burst won’t be affected by camera movement (pressing the shutter).
Of course shooting at 20fps all day long requires a lot of flash cards. But today flash cards are much cheaper. We generally bring six 512GB CF Express cards with us on wildlife trips, plenty of space to keep shooting all day long. Don’t miss the action, and improve your sharp photo ratio….just keep blazing away at fast frame rates for your wildlife photography.