Best Autofocus Settings to Photograph Birds in Flight. How to get the Best Results with your Camera

[@SkylarkFields]

Best explanation of Canon AF settings I have seen, thank you! I am new to Canon and I like how you didn't race through it, allowing me to keep up. Will keep this video to watch again for reference.

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks so much, I'm glad to hear that! Good luck with switching to Canon, I hope it's an enjoyable experience for you!

[@SkylarkFields]

@@JimmyBreitenstein Thank you!

[@naturallyadriftphotoadvent123]

Thanks for teaching this old dog some new tricks. Honestly there are a lot of things in the menu I don't understand or didn't but now I will have to experiment some more!

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks Julie! It's definitely time well spent learning about and adjusting various settings in your camera. Photographing birds in flight has become so much more enjoyable for me than it was years ago, largely because I'm getting better results than I used to and I attribute a lot of that to practice and just learning about my camera.

[@lawrencelunsford6028]

Last spring was my first season of bird photography. The herring run up the river to spawn here in my town and for about six weeks the Osprey, Great Blue Heron and Bald Eagles know it's time to eat! I got some decent pictures I was proud of but I had a LOT of missed shots. I'm using a Nikon D7200 and a Nikon 200-500 zoom lens. The herring and the birds will be here in about six more weeks, can't wait! :)

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Wow, that sounds like an incredible photography opportunity! I'll be curious to hear how this year's run goes for you. What a perfect opportunity to play with various settings and figure out what works best on your camera. Thanks so much for sharing!

[@jss455]

This is a very interesting video. Of all the ones I’ve seen regarding birds in flight, none get so far into the different options regarding Cases! Very interesting. Thanks!

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks so much for the feedback, I hope this video was helpful!

[@jss455]

So much to think about with these amazing cameras!

[@withvinayak]

Thanks for great tips !

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks so much for watching!

[@cmeluzzi]

Thank you, Jimmy. Simple yet effective explanation of use cases and fine tuning. I sometimes notice that my camera struggles in complex scenarios, so I don't hesitate to manually pre-focus. In other situations, it is better to switch to full manual focus. I often get better results this way than if I keep trying to make the autofocus work (my camera doesn't have animal AF). Cheers!

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks so much Cláudio, I always enjoy your feedback and input. I manually focus in really difficult or extremely cluttered situations. But I've never been able to do so and get great results with Birds in flight. That's a whole other level of skill!

[@cmeluzzi]

Actually I use manual focus mostly when birds are close to many branches and the camera struggles to find the subject. I suppose this is much better now with animal eye AF. For flying birds I don't use manual focus, I prefer to select a wide area of focus. I agre with you that manually focusing flying birds should be a great challenge. But we shouldn't forget that the first wildlife photographers of National Geographic and other magazines would have used their long lenses without autofocus and without image stabilization. Those were the true heros! :-)

[@raserex]

Love this video and explanation of the cases more clearly with your examples! One thing; I'm starting out with BIF shooting an R10. As a bird comes into the viewing AF portion of the viewfinder, do you need to HOLD your back button focus down while shooting simultaneously? How does that auto tracking work? Does it track AND focus together? I think I've got my settings appropriate, but am having trouble with this portion of capturing the birds. I'm not clear on how to perform this part.

[@crittaker]

Thanks for sharing

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thanks for watching!

[@nortondefaria]

Good video - Tks Basic question - do you keep pushing the focus button down (back focus in my case) to maintain the tracking on the eye of the bird?

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Thank you! I do hold the back button when I shoot. Occasionally I'll release it and press it again directly after if I feel like I'm starting to lose focus.

[@anthonyhershko]

Great video! I'm an aviation photographer (sometimes Navy documentary), My friend told me to use case 2 And to keep both of the sliders on locked on, is it good? I got Canon R5 with Sigma 60-600mm. Thanks!

[@VABrowneMDPhD]

I wish there was a way to switch between cases using a custom function assigned to one of the programmable buttons instead of having to go into the AF menu. That way as the subject and behavior change you could quickly switch to the optimal case.

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

I'm not sure what you're shooting on, but on Canon cameras you can assign different autofocus cases to your custom shooting modes. So you can have case 1 assigned to custom 1 (C1), case 2 for C2, etc. This is a good way I've found to do things and you might give it a try. There may be even better ways of doing things, but this has worked well for me. I'd love to hear your feedback if you decide to give it a try. Thanks so much for the input!

[@usernamemykel]

Watching this a second time, and I'm embarrassed that I neglected to subscribe. My bad - SUBBED!! QUESTION: Hope you can answer this - I've the R10, and in th online (huge) manual, designated page D185-096, under the heading of "Display Simulation" (red camera 9), it shows an option to show BOTH a simulated exposure AND a D of F preview, yet, that option does not appear in my R10, which has the latest version 1.5.0. It's awkward to see the D of F by using the tiny button nestled in the AF-MF switch, so I was looking for a workaround. Your thoughts, please? Thank you!

[@usernamemykel]

By the time I'd switch to the right setting, my Florida birds would be migrating north! So many decisions to make! Rubber ducky in the bathtub would be more my speed...

[@JimmyBreitenstein]

Keep practicing, soon it'll all be 2nd nature to you and you'll start to see the results in your images. And you can even practice with those rubber ducks if you want 😆 any practice is better than none!