What settings are needed for fully stopping movement, what to use to show some movement, how far do you go with an increase in ISO to get a fast shutter speed and when you increase the ISO for getting a fast shutter speed what changes in the image occur and are there settings available in the newer cameras that will correct this? These questions come up all the time on a bird photography workshop and because they are asked frequently they are very valid questions.

Regarding the first part of this with stopping movement in a subject my answer today is different than it was a couple of years ago. For quite a while, I would tell people my preferred shutter speed for shooting birds in flight and other fast moving wildlife was 1/1000th of a second. That has changed with being able to bump the ISO up a bit while still maintaining image quality. If a subject is moving at a moderate rate 1/1000th is fine, but my preferred speed now is 1/2000th with 1/1600th being adequate. If I'm able to get even faster than that I'll take it. I even have some shots that were shot at 1/4000th and faster. As light fades in the evening if the shutter speed drops below 1/1000th the subject needs to have very little movement to it and once your shutter speed gets below 1/640th of a second it's close to time to calling it an evening unless there is a desire to get some abstract blurry shots of the birds in flight.

While some shots taken at the slower shutter speeds may be more than adequate for some photographers, when images are selected to be shown to others those at the slower shutter speeds tend not to be included in the best shots of the day. That is unless you intend for the image to show a little bit of movement which can be a great shot if handled properly.

Sometimes, even 1/1000th will work to accomplish either of these settings depending on how fast the subject is moving. The first shot below of the snow goose flapping its wings was taken at 1/1000th of a second but there's a nice bit of blur to show movement in the wings (intended) but notice the sharpness in the splashing of the water and the gooses head. The sandhill crane was also shot at 1/1000th but because its movements were not as fast the the gooses wing flaps a sharper image resulted. With a bird in flight, part of the sharpness can be attributed to how good you are at maintaining a steady pan with the subject as well as if it's soraing or flapping its wings. It takes time and practice, but keeping the subject in the same place in the viewfinder is key for getting a sharp image as this means the camera is panning at the same rate as the subject is moving across your plane of view.

A slow shutter speed is not going to free the feathers of this reddish egret shaking its head

Subject size also comes into play with stopping movement. The larger the subject the slower its movements will be, thus a slower shutter speed will be fine for stopping the action. Conversely, the smaller the subject the faster and more erratic the movement. Even with a larger subject, a very fast shutter speed might be desired if lots of detail is desired, especially in the primary wing feathers of a bird or water splashing.

Showing that an extremely fast shutter speed can be used is the example with the roseate spoonbill. It was taken at 1/8000th of a second with an ISO of 500. We were on a small boat so to make sure all flight shots were sharp, the ISO was increased. More often than not, I'll suggest going to 640 for the ISO, even during daylight, but there are times going higher has to be called for. The shot of the snowy egret below was taken at 800 ISO because of how dark the setting was and a fast shutter speed was needed because of the need to freeze any movement, in this case raising its crest. The resulting shutter speed with the 800 ISO was 1/2000th.

The less light there is and the sharper you want the image, some experimenting can take place, especially if you have a newer camera body that's capable of handling very high ISO. Wanting to see what my new 5D Mark III body at the time could really do at extreme ISO, I went as high as 6400 while in Bosque del Apache and the shot below shows that it does quite well at that high level. I could have gone a bit lower as the shutter speed was 1/5000th but the detail that resulted showed it was more than worth the extra shutter speed. Lots of birds in flight techniques are discussed during my various bird photography workshops.

As you can see, there is no perfect answer for for the first part of the conversation, but with what cameras can do now, I would say it's safe to use most any camera at around 500 or 640 ISO in order to get as fast of shutter speed as possible, preferably at least 1/2000th of a seccond. You can never have too fast a shutter speed when it comes to freezing the movement of wildlife.

Another part of the equation for the higher ISO is so the aperture can be adjusted to allow for more depth of field. Too often the aperture is set wide open to get a fast shutter speed but doing this also causes a bit of a range of out of focus bird. If the birds are far away, a more open aperpture will work but if they are somewhat close this can be a problem. I tend to lean towards a setting of f/6.3 or f/7.1. In some situations I have even gone to f/8 or more. The added ISO helps maintain a fast enough shutter speed to work with these different settings.

Birds don't move in slow motion and to capture the extreme detail that comes from landing on the water or flipping a meal can be a make or break situation and the faster the shutter speed the better. Why not be prepared for it when it happens? As you can see, there is no perfect answer for for the first part of the conversation, but with what cameras can do now, I would say it's safe to use most any camera at around 640 ISO in order to get as fast of shutter speed as possible, preferably at least 1/2000th of a seccond. You can never have too fast a shutter speed when it comes to freezing the movement of wildlife.

The less light there is and the sharper you want the image, some experimenting can take place, especially if you have a newer camera body that's capable of handling very high ISO. Wanting to see what my 5D Mark III body could really do at extreme ISO, I went as high as 6400 while in Bosque and the shot below shows that it does quite well at that high level. I could have gone a bit lower as the shutter speed was 1/5000th but the detail that resulted showed it was more than worth the extra shutter speed. Lots of birds in flight techniques will be discussed during my two workshops to Bosque del Apache later that year. There are still a couple of spots available if you're interested in seeing what you can do with birds. The Florida trip in late March also has space as well.

The flipping of a shrimp is very fast action and as such needs a very fast shutter speed, in this case 1/3200

 

During my 2013 northern lights workshop series, one person had a concern about using a higher ISO as she had some photos that even with a lower ISO had a bit of noise in the sky, even with shots taken during the day. We pulled out her computer and with the photo in question we played around with some post processing and much to her amazement the noise disappeared and she went happily along her way knowing she could go back to a lot of nice shots and with a tweak here and there have some even better results.

The image of pre-sunrise at Bosque del Apache is a perfect example of how we can eliminate noise. This was shot at ISO 6400, 1/5000, -2/3 EV. When shooting at sunrise and sunset with nice colors in the sky I like to under-expose to both get a little more shutter speed along with helping saturate the colors more. This shot is the final result after doing a little bit of work in Adobe Camera Raw, my program of choice.

Luminance is a feature found in both Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom that will help eliminate noise created due to the use of long exposures and / or high ISO. Besides these two programs, plug-ins from Noise Ninja and Nik also work well. In ACR, the noise reduction features are found in the Detail section, which conveniently contains both Sharpening and Noise Reduction. In Lightroom the Detail panel is found in the Develop module. The first thing to do upon entering this page is to increase the image size to 100% so that all work is shown at the full size. Most noise is not visible at screen views less than this.

Apply Sharpening to your liking before using Luminance. When sharpening a photo that has a bit of noise, I will increase the Amount slider until a bit more noise starts being added then I stop. I then do the same with the Detail slider. In the Noise Reduction section, drag the Luminance slider until the noise disappears and then back it off a little bit. Adjust the Luminance Detail slider to preference. This is where things get a little touchy as using too much Luminance Detail has a tendency to interfere with the sharpening done previously. It’s worth seeing how far the Detail sliders can be pushed to decrease noise. If there’s any color noise, dial up the Color slider until that disappears.

We’re trying to avoid two things: too much noise in the pixels (some is okay, as long as it is not color noise), and sharpening impacts that produce visible halos at the edges of subjects.

With color noise reduction you may introduce saturation issues, color blending, and other problems related to the color values within the image. With luminance noise reduction you can dramatically reduce the level of detail and perceived sharpness within the image. So noise reduction is best applied to the minimum amount necessary to get acceptable results.

Tip: Once you determine the Luminance Detail setting for any given camera and ISO value save those: pick Save Settings (in the tab name bar), select as a subset Detail, then save these under a name like 5DIII_ISO2500. Next time a convert from this combo is done use Load Settings and it should be fine. Even with loading settings like this, it’s best to do a 100% view evaluation to double-check but more often than not the settings will work fine.

Below is the screen shot of the Sharpening and Noise Reduction panel after the adjustments were made. Some adjustments to Saturation, Vibrance and Clarity were also performed. After the screen shot are the before and after showing a bit of noise in the top corner of the image and then after the adjustments were made. The results here are not quite as evident as they will be on your own computer but knowing how to reduce the noise will help save a lot of images for you in the future.