Advice on how to photograph swallows in flight

[SCoombs]

There is a spot nearby where there are always a fairly large number of swallows flying in basically predictable patterns and on many days over the past few years I have spent hours there trying to photograph them and I have exactly zero worthwhile photos from all of it.

People have mentioned learning their patterns, which makes sense to me and from all the time I've spent doing it I would say is clearly essential, but the thing is that their patterns are not rigidly precise. There is basically a set loop they do and I know where they'll be going, but for any pass through any part of the loop they could still be anywhere within an area twenty or thirty feet across, as they continue to fly from there they may go another twenty feet to the left or the right from there.

The method that seems like it would be most reliable would be acquiring focus while they're a ways off and (as the video Cropfield shared suggests) tracking them until they're close enough to take a photo, but this hasn't worked for me at all. The problem has been that they at the "target acquiring distance" they are small enough that even if I track the swallow very well, keeping the AF box on them and them in the center of the frame, my Z8 always jumps off of them to the background and they are so fast that there's no time to reacquire focus before they're in the "shooting" zone and then they're too close to focus.

 

[EricKlees]

There is a spot nearby where there are always a fairly large number of swallows flying in basically predictable patterns and on many days over the past few years I have spent hours there trying to photograph them and I have exactly zero worthwhile photos from all of it.

People have mentioned learning their patterns, which makes sense to me and from all the time I've spent doing it I would say is clearly essential, but the thing is that their patterns are not rigidly precise. There is basically a set loop they do and I know where they'll be going, but for any pass through any part of the loop they could still be anywhere within an area twenty or thirty feet across, as they continue to fly from there they may go another twenty feet to the left or the right from there.

The method that seems like it would be most reliable would be acquiring focus while they're a ways off and (as the video Cropfield shared suggests) tracking them until they're close enough to take a photo, but this hasn't worked for me at all. The problem has been that they at the "target acquiring distance" they are small enough that even if I track the swallow very well, keeping the AF box on them and them in the center of the frame, my Z8 always jumps off of them to the background and they are so fast that there's no time to reacquire focus before they're in the "shooting" zone and then they're too close to focus.

What AF mode are you using? 3D would not be advisable with suck small fast birds. I use Auto Area AF mode. I have Auto Area on both as my default AF mode and mapped to my AF ON button.

The thought and reasoning/technique here is this. When Auto Area is your default AF mode (the mode you see when you press nothing) is so you get the Passive white AF box on your subject. That Passive AF box is very intelligent and snaps on and is very aggressive being sticky while tracking. When you have that white box on the subject, you can hit your AF ON and it will pickup the tracking directly from the Passive white AF box. 3D will pick up from the Passive box as well and not the center of the frame.

Here is the difference between using the Auto Area and the 3D AD modes. 3D AF mode can only used blocked shot level 3 (Menu Item A3) no matter what you have set it too. Auto Area AF mode can use blocked shot level 3, 4 or 5. So set it to level 5 and Auto Area will be MUCH more sticky when tracking the Swallow with busy backgrounds. Also, keep your exposure to the right a bit as a brighter exposure and EVF will help with better contrast of the subject and in turn help the AF and Subject Detection to acquire and track the Swallow.

Edit: Also a few other things to help the AF system with the Z9 and Z8... Shoot in Flat picture control. If you are using the custom picture control for real time blinkies, it's based off the flat PC already. The other thing to do is turn off the release timing indicator (Menu Item D15) I am assuming the help here is less work for the processor. I seem to get a bit less, what I call, AF drift during 20fps burst shooting.

 

[jpawlan]

I am in awe of the photos of swallows in flight by many of you. Especially Arbitrage and SH1209. I think my problems are: insufficient practice and especially I have been trying to shoot photos too close to them. At least I got two still closeups of them with my Z600PF lens:View attachment 93550View attachment 93528

I cleaned up the photo of the swallow peeping out of its nest.