Photographing Swallows & Swifts in Flight

Photographing birds in flight is a challenge for many bird photographers depending on the bird species. Slow flying birds are slightly easy to photograph. When it comes to fast and erratically flying small birds, its an additional challenge to freeze them in motion. On top of that, they usually fly over water which makes it difficult to lock the focus on the them because of the size and texture of the water.

Our main objective is to freeze birds with great details, no distractions in the background, focus on the eyes and reduce harsh highlights and shadows on the subject.

This article try to help you in minimizing the challenges so that you may likely end up with potential keepers. Here are few simple things as a photographer you need to follow to freeze swallows & swifts in flight.

• Find the perfect place to photograph them.
  • It’s important to find the right place with right background to get perfect flying shot. It could be their hunting or nest places. Swallows & Swifts prefer places like bridges, dams, mountain cliffs as their hunting and nesting grounds. These places allow you to give ample opportunities to get the right picture(s).
• Set the right camera & shooting settings
  • Since our primary objective is to freeze the bird in flight, the ideal camera settings are shutter speed should be high, aperture value should be sharpest one of that camera and ISO as low as possible. My typical settings for my Canon R3 are
    • Shutter Speed: 1/4000 to 1/16000s
    • Aperture: f5.6 – f8
    • ISO: 1000-6400
    • AF-C
    • Back button focus
    • Shooting mode: H+(Maximum FPS allowed)
  • Since we want an extremely high shutter speed, it will be difficult to keep ISO at a lower level.

• Place yourself with your back facing the source of light and wind.
  • This gets the bird fly into the wind and light so that the bird flight speed is reduced allowing us to get the bird in frame and focus it for longer time. Light on the bird allows us to work with lower ISO values.
  • Check the right background where you want to photograph them

• Basic Shooting Technique
  • Position yourself below the flight path of the bird
  • Pre-focus at a point approx. 15-20 meters away
  • Wait till the bird flies into the focus plane and then try to focus on the bird
  • Track the bird in the frame till you get the right distance to photograph them
  • Press the shutter button to get as many shots as you can before you loose the bird

I do agree the latest mirrorless cameras help capture the birds in flight much easier than DSLRs because of it’s amazing animal/bird eye detection and quick focus acquisition capabilities. But the above steps are still applicable to all photographers who wants to photograph birds which are fast and erratic in flight.

Some of the Images I clicked: