Newbie needing advice. (FZ7)

[Reptilian]

Hi all.

It's the first time i have visited this part of the forum and after reading through a couple of the threads it seems someone always has advice no matter how competent the person asking for advice is which i find great! Because... I'm a complete novice.

Some of you might remember the picture i took of a black redstart in my garden which ended up in my local paper... Don't let that fool you, it was a complete fluke. The bird stood perfectly still for about 30 seconds which was enough time for me to take shot after shot with my camera of novice mode some of which came out fair.

Most the time however my shots are badly lacking. Blurred, grainy etc... I know i can get better shots if i knew what to adjust and when. I've realized this camera is so much more than point and shoot like regular compacts.

For example tonight i read around and discovered how to change shutter speed and ISO learning little bit about both. I managed to capture running water from a tap at 1/2000 sec almost perfectly at 80 ISO with flash which i guess isn't difficult but for me it was amazing! I've never seen water look like it did.

Water from taps isn't really exciting but how would i capture similar perfectly still shots from my camera of birds?

The camera is a Panasonic Lumix FZ7, for those unfamiliar you can see the specification here. It's no SLR but everything is adjustable, Shutter speed, ISO, Aperture, Exposure, 12-16.5x Optical (35mm+)... etc.

I realize using speeds such as 1/2000 sec is somewhat useless for bird photography with this camera unless you can get within 5 feet of your subject and then blinding the poor thing with the flash.

I put what i read into practice today aiming the camera on a tripod at the bird feeder. I did it on possibly the worst day and time to do it. Grey, windy, low light, and through a window. Even at 1/20 sec and ISO 400 the pictures were too dark and still not as sharp as i had hoped.

Another thing i hear mentioned a lot on here is Aperture. To me it means nothing, apart from it blurs the background of the subject? I have no idea how to achieve this.

I have so many other questions to ask but I'll see what develops firsts. I'm going to the river Teifi on Thursday which is teeming with kingfishers, I'd love to get a sharp shot of one!

Any advice appreciated.

[eeyore]

on speeds - the numbers indicate the fractions of a second that the shutter is open so for bird photography you wan the highest number possible - certainly over 1/250 - 1/2000 is idea for action wheras 1/20 is far too slow.

on apperture the wide the apperture the more light you have coming in to the camera and thus the faster the available speed - also the wider the apperture the more blurred the background. Appertyures are measured in f stops and the widest is indicated by the lowest number ie f2.8 is twice s wide as f5.6 which is twice as wide as f11 and so on - therefore although every situation is different a good ballpark for bird photography is f5.6

ISO controls the sensitivity of the sensor - the higher the iSO the faster the speed or narrower apperture you will need for a given ammount of light - however the higher the iso the more "noise" (ie small random blocks of colour) you will have - thus it tends to be a good ifdea not to go above 400 unless it is very dark (though 800 is generally tollerable)

over all as a starting point I would set the camera to AV mode which allows you to set the apperture with the camera selecting the appropriate speed and set the apperture to the widest possible (normally f5.6 but sometimes f8 on some cameras) , set the iso to 400 - and see what that gets you - if the speed iasnt faster than 1/125 then you can forget action shots but might still be lucky and get some perched shots at 1/60th or 1/30th if its lower than that either turn the iso up or forget it and just spend your time recceing some good locations.

Oh yes and forget the on camera flash - its likely that most of your subjects will be beyond its effective range and selecting it will force the camera to select the flash sync speed (normally 1/250) regardless of the available light - hence the dark and gloomy pics.

[glsammy]

Hi.
Your going through what we all went through at some time or another, in fact I still am!

Your camera is a very capable tool, so no problem there. What you need for good bird photography is firstly good light, secondly good light, thirdly good light..
Good light = high shutter speed = bird frozen in the frame. With a shutter speed of 1/20sec, it would be a minor miracle if the photo was sharp. Not only would the bird have moved to blur the shot, you can't hold the camera still enough to get a razor sharp image, even with image stabalisation.

Flash can help in poor light, but your camera has an effective flash range of 2.7m at ISO 100, Which means you'd have to be very close to the bird to be able to use it. At the right place, it's quite possible to use flash, in fact I was doing that today at Sherwood Forest.




With this shot I used fill in flash. That means I shot in AV mode, with the flash adding some additional illumination.

This shot was relying almost entirely on the flash:



This open winged effect you'll find you'll get a lot if you use flash. The bird is reacting to the flash.

I recommend you experiment by shooting using AV mode. This means you can set the aperture yourself, and the camera takes care of the Shutter Speed.
By adjusting this yourself, you'll soon learn the relationship between the aperture and the shutter speed.

Let's say you've plenty of light, and you want to use a high shutter speed to freeze a bird in flight. Set your aperture to F2.8 and you'll see the camera has set the fastest shutter speed your camera can use for the amount of light it's getting back from its meter. If the shutter speed is extremely fast, you may be able to set a higher aperture number, say F5.6, of even F8.0 to get as much as possible of the image in focus.

The lower the aperture number, the less the subject will be in focus. So if your very close to the bird, you'd want to set as high an aperture number as possible. Unfortunately, the higher the aperture number, the slower the shutter speed will be.

Here's an example where the aperture is a low number, in this case F7.1. On your camera, the range of aperture settings will be different to mine, your lens I think goes from F2.8 to F8.0. Mine starts at F6.3 (@ 500mm) to F22.




Because I was so close to the bird, I couldn't set a higher aperture number as the shutter speed would have been too low. In fact I wouldn't want to set it much higher. In this case I wanted the background to be out of focus.
So for you, if you want the background to be in focus, you'd want to try and get the aperture to F8.0. If you wanted the background to be out of focus, you'd set it to F2.8.

I hope that's not too confusing..

[glsammy]

Whoops! Sorry Pete for duplicating much of what you said. I took so long preparing my reply I didn't notice yours!

[Reptilian]

Thanks for the advice guys.

It's definitely not the weather today to try any of this out so i'll have to wait until it clears up. I'll let you know how to goes and post my shots up here.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

[mh68]

Couple of tips to get the sharpest results possible....

The Leica lens on the fz7 has a "sweetspot" at F5.6 - this is the sharpest aperture,so setting the lens to F5.6 where light allows will get you the sharpest image possible.Higher or lower F numbers will give slightly softer images due to diffraction.
Shoot in burst mode - often you`ll manage at least one sharp shot if you shoot a series of bursts. Sometimes you`ll get one sharp shot,while the shots either side of the sequence are blurred, showing how effective a burst of shots can be.With the fz7 you can either set it to high speed burst,which is the fastest setting,and allows a specific number of shows to be taken before the camera buffer fills up(3 or 5 i think), or you can set it to infinite burst, which is slightly slower overall but doesnt restrict the number of shots you can fire off in one go.Either way you`ll increase your chances of getting a sharp shot.

Hope that helps a bit once you start shooting again

Mark H

[HowlinWolf]

One small point, Mark H. Softness due to diffraction is only caused by high f/stops. This usually occurs at f/11 or higher with digital sensors (not full frame), and f/16 with full frame or film. The phenomena is caused by the disruption of light waves as they pass through a small aperture or past an object (it is the reason the edge of your cast shadow is not sharp on a sunny day). Opening a lens to maximum aperture will not be affected by diffraction: any softness is caused by the quality of glass and the optical design, and to what lengths the designers have gone to in producing lenses that perform well wide open.

HW

[mh68]

I missed an "etc" off my reply..it should have read -

The Leica lens on the fz7 has a "sweetspot" at F5.6 - this is the sharpest aperture,so setting the lens to F5.6 where light allows will get you the sharpest image possible.Higher or lower F numbers will give slightly softer images due to diffraction etc.

Sorry.

Mark H

[Reptilian]

Another gloomy day with rain, fog and 40mph winds.

For this kind of light i found settings of ISO400, F2.8, 1/500sec are about the fastest acceptable photos i can achieve. I'm guessing that it's my call to make as to what kind of results i want. Am i right saying i could lower the ISO, Increase the aperture for clarity (2.8 was as low as i could go) and lower the shutter speed further to make better use of the light though losing speed?

I can't wait for a clear day.

[mh68]

Its just a case of experimenting really (which is one of the beauties of digital)and all down to your own preference as to what sort of images you want.
Some might prefer a 400iso image, which despite the extra noise,turns out sharper due to good shutter speeds,while others may prefer a less noisy lower iso image which may give slightly less sharp results due to the lower shutter speed,or something in-between.Personally, i`d stick to the higher iso and accept the extra noise,to increase my chances of a sharper end result. An acceptable image, even if not perfect, is preferable to one that ends up in the recycle bin due to blur etc.Wait for better light/weather to take lower iso shots
400iso images with the fz7 should give acceptable results when downsized for viewing on the PC or uploading to the internet,and you can always run the image through a noise reduction program to clean it up a bit too.
To get the most detail at higher iso`s like this, turn the in-camera noise reduction to its lowest setting and apply any noise reduction during editing on the comp.That way you`ll have more control over how much detail is lost in the final image.The Panasonic noise reduction can be pretty aggressive at high iso`s and detail can become smeared.
Also, if shooting at higher iso`s with the FZ cameras,try to get exposure as exact as you can, certainly dont underexpose if you can help it, as brightening up an image during editing exaggerates any noise present.Lowering the brightness of an overexposed shot doesnt have such a drastic effect.

Mark H