54 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
PROJECT 3
VIDEO ALSO ONLINE
http://bit.ly/pp_160_3STEP 1 SET UP ON A TRIPOD
AND USE A TELEPHOTO LENS
Due to the nature of wildlife photography
we’ll be using a long telephoto lens like a
70-300mm, or 100-400mm, but if your
moving subject isn’t as far away you could
use a shorter focal length. Whatever you
shoot with you’ll need to use a tripod, or
other support, to make sure you get an
identical composition in every single frame.
This will make it much easier to stitch images
together in Photoshop, giving you the flying
sequence effect. If you are using a long lens
that has a tripod foot and collar, be sure to
attach the tripod quick release plate to this
so that the load is evenly balanced and avoid
putting stress on the lens mount.
STEP 2 FOCUS YOUR SHOT
Focus on the bird feeder or branch that you
think the bird will fly onto using One-Shot AF.
Then go into Manual focus mode to lock the
focus in place, so it doesn’t move between
shots, this makes it much easier to stitch
them together. If you don’t want the branch
or feeder to appear in the frame you need to
recompose without touching the focus ring,
and adjust your tripod head to get your
desired framing. After observing the
behaviour of our kingfisher we suspected
that after diving it would return to the branch
it was currently perched. With this in mind
we focused on the branch and left the
framing quite loosely, allowing room for the
kingfisher to fly into – you never know
exactly where they’re going to go when
they decide to take off!VIEW^ TH
E^ VIDEO