What focal length for birding ?

BADGER.BRAD

BADGER.BRAD

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Hello all,

Just out of interest what would you say was a good general focal length for Birding ? I of course understand that each capture would be dependent on the situation but what would be a good starting average ?

Thanks all
 
400mm minimum unless you have the ability to get close. Distance from my feeders to my open window is about 5m, and I need at least 400mm, sometimes with the 1.4 TC and that's on a crop body (Fuji).
 
Pretty much as long as you can justify/afford.
 
Photographing birds is not something that's ever interested me but one day I sat in the garden and tried to photograph a robin with a 45-150m on MFT so that's a FF equiv of 300mm. I was quite shocked at how small the bird was in the frame. What this little episode taught me is that long focal lengths and being close to the subject and even then sometimes possibly having to crop to some degree is possibly the norm.
 
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woof woof said:
Photographing birds is not something that's ever interested me
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I spend a lot of time out in nature and do love to see new animals and birds but I must admit it's never really been my thing to photograph them, I generally prefer a relatively small camera and photograpth things whilst out and about doing other things. There are a couple of bird hides very near me and like you Alan one day I thought I'll have a go at photographing them. I was only 20 feet or so away and used a 135mm Pentacon lens on a crop sensor (200mm) it was no where near long enough although the photos where o.k when cropped they certainly were no where near what other people manage to achieve at much greater distances. Being honest I could not justify the expense of a modern long lens for the use I would get out of it.
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
I spend a lot of time out in nature and do love to see new animals and birds but I must admit it's never really been my thing to photograph them, I generally prefer a relatively small camera and photograpth things whilst out and about doing other things. There are a couple of bird hides very near me and like you Alan one day I thought I'll have a go at photographing them. I was only 20 feet or so away and used a 135mm Pentacon lens on a crop sensor (200mm) it was no where near long enough although the photos where o.k when cropped they certainly were no where near what other people manage to achieve at much greater distances. Being honest I could not justify the expense of a modern long lens for the use I would get out of it.
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I like compact kit so I've never really had a long lens for FF or even APS-C cameras, the longest I did have was a 28-300mm for APS-C. I have a 100-400mm for MFT but I bought that with a couple of landscape and moon shots in mind. The thing is that it's f6.3 at the long end and if you're fighting for shutter speed and to keep the ISO down that could be an issue however there have been lots of impressive bird/other small critter shots taken with MFT posted on this forum.

I wouldn't be too afraid of cropping unless you want to print big. I personally find even a 100% crop from MFT can look ok filling my screen.
 
For birds in my garden, they land of the same branch repeatedly so I set up the camera fairly close but then remote control from my iPad. I can sit comfortably indoors or another part of the garden and fire the shutter as the birds pose. However, when out in more natural locations, it always seems that I need more focal length.

Dave
 
600mm on ff unless you can get close.
300/400mm on m43....
Even then, I'd still expect to be cropping....I've used 400mm on m43, 600mm on apsc and 600mm on ff and still had to crop....
 
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I'd say that the speed and sharpness of the lens matters as much/more than the FL with modern high resolution (small pixel) sensors... i.e. going to a longer and slower lens that can't resolve as much doesn't really gain you anything.
 
Most of my photography is birding. I have a 150-600mm lens on a FF DSLR and that is borderline insufficient in most cases. Adding a 1.4x teleconverter (840mm focal length) helps with getting the bird bigger in the frame and is okay for larger birds (e.g. Heron, Egret, Cormorant, etc.) but the max aperture of f/9 means the camera struggles to lock onto focus in anything but really bright sunlight.

I can cope with noisy images but blurred ones are just trash so high ISO is a must most of the time so I use auto-ISO and let it do what it wants and deal with it in post. I was shooting at RSPB Ham Wall on Thursday (mostly heavy cloud and rain) and I got about 100 images between ISO 10,000 and 25,600 which cleaned up on the computer.

Steven has a very good point about lens quality, especially if you are going to crop quite heavily.
 
400mm minimum for close ups is nice. Sometimes though, it's nice to step back and take a habitat image, something I'm promising myself to try more of this year. Also, a long lens is fine but if it is a frame filler you're after, then getting close is just as important as focal length.

There is no reason though, why decent close ups cannot be taken with even a 300mm lens, it's about getting close.

Not forgetting sensor formats, 600mm on a FF camera is obviously shorter than 600mm on a crop or MFT body.

I have the Sigma 150-600C, it's usually locked off at 600mm if I'm sat waiting. Last year though, I took my best (IMO) Kingfisher images at 452 mm on a 5Div, with the same lens.
 
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In my very limited experience just a few of my own observations. Consider the following, if it just for social media and you have enough megapixels for heavy cropping then a 400mm on FF or equivalent on a crop sensor is about the minimum. If you shoot in city parks or peoples gardens then you will have better luck as the birds are “semi“ tame with humans. Wild birds are probably more nervous. Small birds are very twitchy and keep moving about constantly so the af on your camera can also have a bearing on the focal length. With a Dslr most AF points are centrally located so a longer focal length is more beneficial whereas with a mirrorless you get it spread out and with the latest mirrorless with animal tracking it’s easier to track smaller objects in the frame. Most my photos of birds have been where they are on the ground, trees which is much easier than birds in flight where they tend to be further away. The issue of focal length also comes with lots of dilemmas. Cost, maximum aperture, autofocus speed, weight etc.
 
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I don't do a lot of birding in a serious capacity. Managed to just about get a couple of nice shots of Red Kites because

a) they're numerous where I live and
b) they're pretty big birds

The maximum lens I had is a 400mm which can be fitted to either a Crop sensor (1.6) or full frame. And I still had to do some heavy cropping.

I've never done any tests, but I'm not sure I buy in to the whole 'you get extra zoom with a crop sensor' argument. What you get is a cropped image, so I'd love to see some tests that show the same situation shot with the same lens on FF and crop sensor and see if you gain anything using the crop that you couldn't just do by cropping the FF image. But that's a whole other thread.

But I've just bought a bridge camera with a 24-600mm equivalent lens.

Walking through the park this morning I had a crow maybe 20 foot away and it just about filled the frame at max zoom. So, fairly big bird, within 20 feet of a 600mm lens.

So it's a combination (I think) of how close you can get versus how long the lens is. It's easier to get close to robins for example because they're bolshy little buggers.

But also adding to the mix, how big your sensor is, how big your wallet is and how big your arms are*.

*A friend of mine was lent a Canon 1D (something) and a 600mm F4 prime lens. He wanted it for sports and used it with a monopod. Which promptly started sinking into the muddy ground. He brought it in to work and I could barely hold it steady enough to take a pic. Obviously it's designed to be used with a tripod, but that means you have to be fairly static. - i.e. in a hide.

The above is not a very well-constructed argument (mostly because I'm not an expert), but in my limited experience, I'd say I've never yet found the lens to be too long, and have very often found that my 100-400 is too short.
 
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as as been Said earlier , the more megapixels the shorter lens you can use due to being able to crop without losing too much resolution.
also the larger zoom lens require additional support for the lens.
 
Kell said:
I've never done any tests, but I'm not sure I buy in to the whole 'you get extra zoom with a crop sensor' argument. What you get is a cropped image, so I'd love to see some tests that show the same situation shot with the same lens on FF and crop sensor and see if you gain anything using the crop that you couldn't just do by cropping the FF image. But that's a whole other thread.
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I've done the tests, and there are a lot of variables that make it more complicated... pixel size, lens IQ, diffraction, etc, etc.

In the end, if you can put more pixels on the subject (no matter how), if you have a lens capable of resolution greater than was being utilized/available, if you use it with settings that allow for that (diffraction), in a situation that allows for greater resolution (environmental/distances), and you account for the output effective focal length (crop/SS)... then there can be notable benefits.

But the realities mean that in 95% of cases it makes little difference how you go about it. Cropping is cropping... FL, TC, crop sensor, crop in post are all just various forms of cropping the scene/light available, and they all generate essentially the same results.
 
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I'm with everyone else. Probably can't be to long. I've only tried birds a few times and a 200 mm lens don't cut it. have a 170-500 I set on a tripod in the house with a feeder on the deck to attract birds and did a lot better. Trying to get close can be a real bummer but drawing them in is much easier. Tried some quail years ago. My wife put food out for them and brought them in but my 70-200 was worthless. Finally built a blind near them and hid in it when the wife fed them and instant better results. still wish I'd had the longer lens then though!
 
Starting out to keep it simple you want 400mm or more, its workable with less but you may find yourself getting dishearted and cropping, personally me I use a 400mm f/2.8 and its more than enough for me and the work I produce, but its also all down to if your going to learn a subject and get close to them overtime or turn up at hides and shoot etc.
 
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