The Importance Of Being Fast
I am not a fast person; never have been. Slow and deliberate is more my style. The title of this post refers to using sufficiently fast shutter speeds when photographing birds. They will not be still. They take action unexpectedly, and the photographer has to be ready with the correct camera settings.
Green Heron
Twice recently I’ve missed what would have been excellent shots because I forgot to use a fast shutter speed, at least 1/1000 second. I show two sequences below. When the birds were still, my photos were sharp. When they started moving, my photos were blurry even though the shutter speed was 1/500 second - not fast enough.
The first sequence is of a green heron. It spots a critter; strikes and catches it; swallows it whole; then discards the weeds it also grabbed. Some shots would have been five-star if I’d been shooting at 1/1000 second.
The hawk in the second sequence was in perfect focus when sitting on the sign and later in the grass. All the shots of the hawk moving from sign to grass are blurry.
There is a third sequence below of other bird shots I flubbed through using not-fast-enough shutter speeds.
