Capturing birds in flight, a Cooper's hawk, and the process of working to get a 'tack' sharp photo

 

Capturing birds in flight like the Cooper's hawk above has been quite an adventure into photography for me. I'm not sure that the average person knows exactly how hard it is to capture a sharp image, but I can tell you it's more difficult than one would think. Initially starting out just shooting birds that were still, I always had the desire to capture birds in flight, the question is: how do you do it?

Capturing flying birds has required me to watch quite a few youtube videos and read from a few birding books that I have, hoping that there would be an answer to this question. Having the right camera with the ability to shoot at unbelievably high shutter speeds is a start. My Sony Alpha 6400 seemingly has no end to how fast it can take pictures. However, shutter speed by itself is not the only factor. Something called the 'exposure triangle' is the key. I won't go too much further into this as it can take hours to explain, but these three components involve 1) aperture (f-stop), 2) shutter speed, and 3) ISO (camera's sensitivity to light) all working in combination.   You also need a high quality (meaning high dollar) tripod to eliminate camera motion, especially when the shutter speeds are very high. I learned a long time ago at work that trying to adjust too many variables in a process can lead to a disastrous result. So I began to try and decipher the magic, one factor at a time.

The photo above is a handheld shot taken with my 70-200mm sigma lens, at 185 mm, f-stop of 7.1, 1/4000th of a second and at ISO 5,000. What is all this, how do I know all this information, and how does it help me? I know all this information because of the camera settings I used at the time. After the fact, if I've used the photography software 'Lightroom,' it will show all this information for any picture I've taken. I don't have a clue as to how it collects and stores all this information, but it's very useful. For instance, I first started trying to take pictures of flying birds with a shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second. A general rule of thumb is to set ISO to 'auto' starting out and your f-stop to 8.0, keeping these two factors the same. There are times when you need to adjust your f-stop to let in more light because the image is too dark.  If the f-stop of 8.0 doesn't work out well, making that adjustment changes the ISO! I have some pictures at that exact speed but the pictures are not 'tack' sharp. What do you do to improve and when do you sort of declare victory? First you need to gradually increase the shutter speed. The problem is that some point you cross the magical threshold of induced noise or 'graininess' of the subject. I'm pretty much stuck on 1/4,000th of a second shutter speed for now, working on the other factors that influence the image; f-stop and ISO. 

This is probably way more information than you wanted to know, but I thought by giving you some insight into what it takes to get the shot when you are looking at photographs of animals in motion, you might have more appreciation of what it takes.  I'm in no way close to any victory, far from it.