Page 20 - Out Birding August 2022

WYSIWYG is Bird Photography Now
Many of you will remember the days of film, photographing, running out of film at the wrong moment, and fiddling around changing film, and putting away the old one, by which time the bird has sunk underwater or left the nest or flown away. Then the agonised wait for seven days or so for the processed images to return through the post. Then the excitement and inevitable disappointment of opening the pack and checking the results. That picture you thought you had captured is not quite as you remembered it! The cost too, one trip involved 16 films!
Then came digital, and all the problems initially with low resolution images, but at last you could check what you had actually captured immediately, and have another shot if needs be within seconds of the first. They would be too dark, or too light or slightly out of focus, which you couldn’t distinguish on the tiny screen on the back of the early cameras.
Now we are one step further forward with the newer version of digital cameras that have abandoned the mirror - Mirrorless cameras. Some people do not like the digital viewfinder, but that is a small price to pay for the benefits.
With these cameras when you look in the viewfinder, or at the rear screen, you can see exactly what you are going to get, the lighting the depth of field and the sharpness (helped with advance auto focusing techniques, including bird’s eye recognition). The effects of any adjustments you make to the settings are immediately apparent in the image you see, before you press the shutter. What You See Is What You Get.
These cameras usually have a high dynamic range so you are safe to put the ISO into Auto, and just adjust the depth of field with changes to the F stop, and adjusting the speed to either catch movement, or blur it – intentionally. Thus, the camera will al- ways give you correct lighting levels by adjusting the ISO for you. With auto focus too, and in camera and in lens stabilisation – well it has just taken all the guess work out of photography. And in most cases taken away the need for a tripod too. One can only wonder what new innovations will come along!
Now all you have to do is capture the bird in the lens at the right moment and press the shutter, silently in most cases! Many will choose to do bursts of shots – which can be very effective, as you will rarely run ‘out of film’ or memory However, once you press the shutter the camera will take over and shoot mechanically at the prescribed number of shots per second,
which can mean you miss the moment you wanted. I still prefer the ‘one shot’ method.
Keep taking photos! It is the only way to improve those all important images!
Having written this article before GGT, I was horrified to find that I had my camera on the wrong settings for most of the time! The camera is only as good as the photographer!!
John Hudson
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