I would add this consideration for BIF: you may like a little wing blur rather than a fully frozen subject.I get questions all the time about the "best" shutter speeds for bird in flight (BIF) photography, so I thought I'd talk about that a little with this post.
First, there's no perfect BIF speed (although, 1/3200 comes close). I have shots from 1/20th all the way to 1/8000th. It just depends on the bird and what I'm trying to accomplish. For this post, we'll just look at speeds for freezing the action.
The speed you pick depends on the speed of the bird. I'm going to do this by size since larger birds are generally slower than smaller birds. However, there are a couple notes...
1. If there's a heavy wind and the bird is flying into it, you can generally drop these speeds at stop (or more) if you need to. If the bird has his back to a brisk wind though, you will likely need another stop faster than what I'm recommending below (or as close as you can get). (In short, it's all about the bird's "ground speed".)
2. If a bird is flying towards you, that's another time you generally want a bit more speed than the estimates below - or at least stick to the higher speeds in the range. When you're panning with the bird, you're helping to overcome some of its speed - when it's coming at you, that goes out the window.
And of course, you need to consider where these speeds put your ISO as well. Generally, when I'm shooting in brighter conditions and all things begin equal, I tend to favor the faster speeds mentioned below. If I'm pushing higher ISOs, I try to get away with the lower shutter speeds - but - with the understanding that my keeper rate may be a touch lower.
All that in mind, here are my shutter speed recommendations for freezing BIF action:
Large Birds (Cranes, Egrets, etc.)
1/1600th ~ 1/3200th
Medium Birds (cormorants, eagles, hawks)
1/2000th ~ 1/4000th
Smaller birds (songbirds)
1/3200th ~ 1/8000th
Of course, it's possible to get sharp images at speeds slower than these (and I have quite often), but these speeds tend to be pretty "safe" if you just want a nice, sharp image.
By the way, my favorite shutter speed for most BIF action is 1/3200th. Seems to work well in most situations.
To my eye it looks more natural.
That means eg 1/2000 for our Bee-eaters rather than 2500 or 3000.
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