This is the easy bit…!
Common tern at 1/5000 of a second
Normally, I like to post a ‘successful’ picture to illustrate these hints and tips posts, but I can’t today because I failed miserably! I was trying to photograph a common tern diving for fish, but I just couldn’t get a good shot of the moment when it hit the water.
Let me set the scene for you…
I recently spent the morning in Bushy Park near London, taking pictures of the wildlife with my friend Tammy Marlar. (You can read about it here.)
Among other things, we went to the Leg of Mutton pond to photograph common terns fishing. I was shooting with a Sony a1 and a 600mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, but it was still very tricky!
Common terns ‘fish from the hover’, which means they take up a position around 50 feet (15 metres) above the water, wait until they see a fish and then dive into the water to grab it with their beak.
The problem with trying to photograph this is that the ‘decisive moment’ happens a long way from where the bird is. It dives far too fast for you to follow it with your camera, so what can you do?
I tried a number of different options—none with any success…!
Shoot the Bird in the Hover
This is the low-risk, low-return option. If you just take a burst of pictures of the bird at a high shutter speed when it’s hovering in an almost stationary position, then you will get a few decent ones, but you won’t get the ‘money shot’. If your ambition only extends to taking ‘good’ shots rather than ‘great’ shots, then this is fine, but I hope you want more than that…!
This is what I started out doing, and you can see the kind of picture I took at the top of this article. As I say, good but not great.
Advantages
The bird stays in the same position for up to 10 seconds at a time, so it’s easy to photograph.
You can keep the bird in the frame at all times.
Disadvantages
You don’t get the shot you really want!
Stand Further Away
If you move far enough away, then the angle between where the bird is hovering and where it hits the water is narrower. That means you can keep both in the frame and take a burst as soon as you see the bird dive.
I tried this once when the terns were at the other end of the pond, and I got closest to getting a shot of the bird actually catching the fish. Unfortunately, my reactions weren’t quick enough, so all I caught was the splash. I also didn’t keep shooting for long enough, so I didn’t get any frames of the bird flying off with its catch. Finally, the bird was just too far away, so it was far too small in the frame to get a decent shot.
Advantages
You don’t need to guess where the bird will hit the water.
You can keep the bird in the frame at all times.
Disadvantages
The bird will appear smaller in the frame, so you’ll need to crop in further.
You still need good reactions, and you may still have to ‘guess’ when the bird is about to dive and start shooting just in case!
Pre-focus on the Water
This is not easy, but one way to try and capture the crucial moment is by pre-focusing on the water using a narrow aperture to give you a decent margin for error. Common terns tend to dive pretty much vertically to catch fish, so you should know roughly where to point your camera.
Using back button focus on my mirrorless camera, I had two options: I could either use a spot focus area to make sure I was focusing on exactly the right place, or I could use the wide area in the hope that the camera would recognise and track the bird in time for me to take a picture.
Neither worked for various reasons. The basic problem was that I didn’t know when, where or even whether the bird would hit the water, so I had to rely on a lot of guesswork:
Not knowing where the bird would hit the water meant I had to guess where to focus.
My reactions would never be good enough to catch the bird just before it entered the water, so I had to guess when to press the shutter.
Another problem was that the bird sometimes couldn’t see any fish, so it just flew off! Because I was focusing on the water, I had to keep guessing that the tern was still there.
Finally, relying on the camera’s autofocus system to pick up the bird in such a tiny fraction of a second was just a bit ambitious! It might’ve worked, but the terns flew off for good before I had a chance to find out.
Which was probably for the best…!
Advantages
You don’t need to move your camera.
If the bird actually ends up in the right place, you have the best chance of getting the shot you want.
Disadvantages
You don’t know where the bird will hit the water.
You still need to guess when to press the shutter—which might mean hundreds of wasted frames if you’re shooting at 30 fps!
You don’t know if the bird is still hovering or has flown off, so you have to keep checking.
If you use the wide focus area (ie the whole of the frame) and use back button focus, the camera might not have time to track the bird as it enters the frame.
Verdict
This is a tricky shot to pull off, but it’s possible, and you’ll be very proud of yourself if you manage it! I’d start out with your local pond or river and see what happens, but a trip to a hide would give you more chances to practise your skills. Eventually, you should be able to capture moments like this wherever they occur.
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