The Canon Magazine 55
HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY
USE A CAMERA
WITH A RAPIDBURST RATE
Your camera’s burst rate,
measured frames per
second (fps), denotes
how quickly your camera
can fire off a continuous
stream of shots. It’s
possible to get the shots
you need with entry-level
cameras, though they
often have slow burst
rates of around 5fps,
which will mean there is
more time for the bird to
move between shots. To
capture a wider range
of movements and
increase your chances
look at Canon’s cameras
such as the 7D Mark II
(10fps), 90D (10fps), M6
Mark II (14fps), or if you
can afford it, Canon’s
EOS-1D X Mark II, which
can shoot Raw files at a
blistering 16fps!STEP 3 DIAL IN THE RIGHT
CAMERA SETTINGS
You need to shoot a rapid burst of pictures to
ensure you have the best chance of getting
every little movement of the bird as it flies
through your frame. To do it, go into your
Canon camera’s Quick menu and set the
Drive mode to Continuous High. Now you
need to set up your camera to freeze the
motion, so go into Aperture Priority mode
and dial in your widest aperture, such as f/4
and tweak your ISO value until you get a
shutter speed of 1/1000 sec or faster – this
was ISO400 for us on a slightly cloudy
winter’s day. Now just wait for a bird to
perch on your branch, or feeder, and take a
sequence of shots at the moment it flies off.
STEP 4 EDIT IT TOGETHER
Open up Adobe Bridge CC and select the
images in your series that you want to merge
together by clicking on the first shot, holding
Shift and clicking on the last pic. Then go to
Tools>Photoshop>Load into Photoshop
Layers and in Photoshop CC if you go to your
Layers panel (Window>Layers) you’ll see all
of your images stacked together. Now you
need to reveal each bird, so we’ll click on the
Add Layer Mask icon and hit Ctrl/Cmd+I to
make this layer totally black, hiding the layer.
Now with a soft white Brush Tool you need to
paint back over the area where the bird was
to reveal it again. Click on the layer below in
the Layers panel and repeat this process
until you have revealed all of the birds in your
sequence to get them all in a single picture.
The result will leave your friends amazed!