Agreed, but it's a great challenge and when it works it can be very rewarding in part because of that challenge
I don't know what lenses you're running nor what kinds of birds you're trying to capture but FWIW:
- If possible with your gear try hand holding when first learning to pan and track BIF images. That can help if you're using moderately sized lenses but isn't really a very good option for really big glass but at least when you start it's good to have more freedom than you'd get with a tripod mounted rig. If that's not possible a full gimbal mount, half gimbal mount (e.g. Sidekick) or perhaps a monopod with a decent head are much better for learning how to track BIF than most pure ball head setups.
- Start with bigger slower moving birds that fly more predictably before working towards smaller more erratic birds. If you can get used to smoothly panning bigger birds like Herons, Egrets, Hawks and soaring birds it gets easier to work down towards Gulls or Ducks and then the real challenging stuff like Swallows and Flycatchers. Starting with the small erratic birds can be really frustrating. One exception is Hummingbirds that aren't too bad if you catch them hovering near a flower or feeder but most smaller birds and especially the mid air insect hunters can be really challenging and not a great place to start.
- I'd suggest starting with Group AF on Nikon cameras unless your shooting environment has a lot of close in objects that can fool Group AF. It tends to be more forgiving for flying birds though you do have to be careful anytime you pan past objects closer than the bird or the bird turns a bit and the wings are a lot closer than the head and eyes (though often that means the bird is flying away from you so maybe it's time to stop capturing images
). If that's not working then try the smallest Dynamic AF group that you think you can still keep over the bird's eye or neck most of the time and work towards smaller Dynamic areas as your tracking skills improve.
- Since you generally want to give a bird plenty of room to fly into the frame and it's not unusual to do some cropping for BIF images it often makes sense to start by using the center focus point in either Group AF or one of the Dynamic AF modes. It tends to be the most sensitive AF point in falling light conditions and since you may have some birds flying left to right and others going the opposite direction it's a pretty good middle of the road solution that works in a lot of cases. As your tracking skills improve you can start doing more dynamic composition on the fly by choosing other parts of the frame where you'd like to place the eye but starting simple can help and can work well for a lot of BIF images.
Good luck and post some results in the BIF thread.
