Trogon Photo Tours

March 2019  - This month's newsletter is about depth of field when photographing multiple birds, it features mainly images from our Arizona workshops. 

Gambel's Quail family photographed May 2009 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 1DMk3, 500F4 1/640 F16, iso 800, tripod, blind.  While this is not a great image I think it illustrates well the difficulty of photographing multiple birds up close.  With the 500F4 I was unable to get all of the birds in focus even at F16.  The babies in the front are pretty sharp, mother quail is not bad but then the babies at the back are out of focus.  For this shot I focused on the front babies.  I could have focused on the mother's neck and possibly split the difference giving me a better chance to get all birds in focus but then I ran the risk of having the very front baby out of focus.  I find if the front bird is not in focus it often ruins the composition. 

Dunlin and Marbled Godwits photographed February 2008 at the Tokeland Marina, WA.  Canon 1DMk3 500F4 1/640 F18, iso 640, tripod.  This is another full frame shot which illustrates the limited depth of field when working with a number of birds.  I focused on the Dunlin in the front row as if they were out of focus I think it would have ruined the image.  They are sharp as is the first row or two of Godwits but then they quickly go out of focus even at F18.

Gambel's Quail photographed May 2009 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 1DMk3 500F4 1/1250 F11, iso 640, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, tripod, blind.  For this shot I was set up on the quail on the left at I think F6.3 and I vividly remember quickly flipping the dial a couple of spots to get a lot more depth of field as I wanted to make sure I got both birds sharp.  I think most people underestimate with 2 birds close up how much they need to stop down to get both of them sharp.  

Curve-billed Thrasher and White-winged Dove photographed May 2016 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/3200 F9, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative meteringat 0, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head, blind.  This image is just cropped a bit from the left.  For this shot I was focused on the thrasher on top of the cactus when this dove swooped in to take it's place.  Because there was plenty of light, the background was far away and I knew there would be chances for both getting birds taking off and interaction between birds I had both a fast shutter speed and a fairly wide depth of field for my settings.  With those settings I was prepared to get both birds in action here.   At least 2 stops down from wide open is usually necessary to get the needed depth of field. This shot was a top 100 award winner in the annual Audubon Photo Contest a couple of years ago. 

Curve-billed Thrasher and Ladder-backed Woodpecker photographed May 2016 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2000 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  Another thing which needs to be evaluated when photographing multiple birds like this is are they in roughly the same focal plane or not.  In this case they are not so it's necessary to stop down even more than otherwise. 

Curve-billed Thrasher photographed May 2016 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2500 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  This shot was taken just a few minutes after the previous image.  While this is a shot of just one bird, it illustrates how these settings can work well for birds in flight too.  For this shot I was focused on the cactus and with a fast shutter speed and stopping down to F11, the bird was very sharp even though it was the cactus which was the focus point. 

Female House Finch, Pyrrhuloxia and Northern Cardinal photographed at Green Valley Arizona May 2016.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2500 F6.3, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head. This image was taken two days after the previous images and on this day we had gray overcast weather so there was not nearly as much light available.  As I discussed above I would have preferred to stop down to at least F8 here with multiple birds but that would have meant either decreasing the shutter speed or increasing the iso.  Cardinals fly very fast so dropping the shutter speed much would have resulted in the Cardinal not being sharp, increasing the iso would have decreased the image quality overall so these settings are what I compromised on.  Viewed at 100% neither the House Finch nor the Cardinal are very sharp due to the depth of field constraints but they are passable when the image is viewed as a whole.  In fact I like this image so much with the varying poses and species that I have entered it in a few contests this year (have yet to hear the results). 

Gambel's Quail babies photographed May 2016 at Green Valley, Arizona.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/800 F11, iso 400, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  May is a great time of year to photograph baby Gambel's Quail at this location.  Unlike the first image these birds were lined up pretty much in the same plane so stopping down to F11 was enough to get them all in pretty good focus.  They were up against the bank so the background was going to be close, if they had been up on top of the bank with the background farther away I might have stopped down even more. 

Those are a few examples of photographing multiple birds in the same frame.  Don't be afraid to stop down a fair bit to get all of the birds in focus particularly if you have a clean background and plenty of light to work with.   I am heading back to Arizona next month to lead a workshop at this location, if you want to check it out see Arizona Photo Workshop.