I apologise for joining in so late on this thread but, as some of you will know, I’ve only recently come back to WAB after a 5 month absence and I’ve been trawling through some of the threads I missed during that time looking for those of interest (to me).
Needless to say, this one is and on the assumption that the topic is still of general interest here are some of my own observations based on my albeit limited experience of trying to capture good images of Kingfishers in flight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eeyore  jeff h would be your man for kingfisher advice - his thread on them is incredible. |
Incidentally, I’m flattered by Pete’s (Eeyore’s) kind words about my ‘Kingfisher Diary (with photos)’ thread
– thanks Pete. Sadly however, and not wishing to sound too immodest, whilst it’s probably true to say that I now know more than most about the behaviour of Kingfishers, I’m afraid this knowledge hasn’t yet transferred into being able to get good in-flight shots of them - despite the many and often frustrating hours I’ve spent in trying to do so
As others have said, the conventional technique for in-flight shots is panning/tracking the bird and whilst I’ve had some good results in using this method with large/slower/high-flying birds (such as Swans, Geese, Buzzards, Kites, Barn Owls, etc), trying to capture shots of small/fast/low-flying birds in this way is much more difficult. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but locating and tracking a largish bird against a background of the sky is always going to be easier than trying to do the same with a smallish bird against a dark, variable background.
Let’s not forget that Kingfishers are much smaller birds than most people realise – being only a little larger than a sparrow - and it’s been calculated that they typically fly at the rate of about 12 metres per second (David Boag – ‘The Kingfisher’ – 1982). It’s the combined effect of these two factors that makes it, in my experience, almost impossible to ‘lock on’ the bird in direct flight. This is no doubt (and as Matt says) why most published Kingfisher flight shots show the bird hovering or diving and in all my researches I’ve only seen a handful of good quality images of a Kingfisher in full flight.
And even if you do manage to ‘lock on’ the bird, as Eeyore has said and despite Canon’s claims about the ability of its AF Servo autofocus to track fast moving objects, I’ve found that my EOS 30D simply isn’t up to the job. It can cope quite well with things like racing cars, but a Kingfisher in flight is simply too small and fast for it (so it’s not just you Graham
)
So, after literally hundreds of failed attempts using the panning/tracking method I resorted to the technique mentioned by Jon – manually focussing on a pre-set point and waiting for the bird to pass through it. During the time that our local breeding pair were feeding at the nest they were making dozens of visits each day but generally followed one of only 2 or 3 flight paths on their approach. After a while I had a pretty good idea of the precise route of one such flightpath and I positioned my hide and selected a focus point on that flightpath such that as the bird passed through my field of view it remained on the same plane.
Earlier attempts had taught me that a shutter speed of at least 1/1250th is required to freeze the flight action of a Kingfisher and although I was content to set whatever aperture/ISO settings would let me achieve that, rarely was the light good enough and my lens fast enough to give me the best of all worlds and so I usually had to compromise on one or other of the settings.
There was then the dilemma of selecting the optimum focus distance – too short a focal length and the bird is simply too far away resulting in a very small image. Too long and the viewing/frame area becomes too small with the risk that even with my 30D firing at 5 frames per second I’d actually miss the bird. Remember, that these birds are travelling at about 12 metres per second, so that even with a focal area as large as only 2 metres across the bird will pass through it in 1/6th of a second!
After much trial and error (and may I just say that I really appreciated the flexibility of my Canon 100 – 400 IS lens here), I settled on a focal length of about 135mm with the bird passing by at a distance of about 5 metres. Thankfully, the birds usually gave out a call as they made their approach and as soon as one came into view I started firing off shots at 5 frames per second.
It was by using this method that I got my best shots to date but, to be honest, the results have been quite poor (and certainly not good enough for posting on WAB’s
Gallery or even in my ‘Kingfisher Diary (with photos)’ forum thread, apart from the last one) and this is one area of photographing Kingfishers that I intend to concentrate more on next year.
Anyway, here’s few examples of the results I achieved – you’ll probably look at them and think (like I do now) all that time and effort for such poor results
and my best effort yet -
Finally, since starting work on this post I've realised that vinnychameleon (who started the thread) doesn't seem to have been around on WAB for some time, his last forum post being back in early September. I hope all's well with you VC and look forward to seeing back on WAB with your infectious enthusiasm for alll things wild
Jeff
so I need some advice on photographing kingfishers in flight. I know this is a very challenging subject but wondered if I could get some advice. The main thing i am stuck with is how to follow the bird as they fly very fast along the water? I know I will need a very low aperture thus a very high shutter speed but if this could be elaborated on that would be great 
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