A Quick Guide to Photographing Bald Eagles on Lake CDA

Mike’s Guide to Photographing Eagles

This guide is aimed at capturing eagles in flight with mid-range cameras and lenses.  I’m sure there are other methods out there. However, if you like my images, then this is an open guide to how I get them.

Also, there is no one recipe for photographing the eagles. Like all things photography, one must evaluate the light and make corrections as necessary. However, this should be a pretty good start.

Mike Busby Photography - CDA Eagle

 

Photographing the winter eagles at Lake Coeur d’Alene is advanced shooting, and you’re going to be frustrated until you accept that it’s difficult and advanced shooting.  Give yourself the space and time to learn, and understand you might not get solid images the first few times your out. However, you will start to impress yourself if you stick with it.

The scenes are problematic because the background is always changing, the exposure readings are in constant flux, the the light is usually terrible, anda fast shutter speed is required in order to get clean shots of the birds in flight.

A Framework

#1 – Accept that it’s tough shooting. If you don’t get this, then you will drive yourself crazy trying to get shots that are physically impossible to get.

#2 – Shoot on bright days. We may only get a few days of sunlight on that part of the lake. However, it’s insanely tough to get good shots on cloudy days – even with high-end equipment.

#3 Use a healthy zoom – anything between 300mm and 500mm, and don’t concern yourself with a tripod. Your shutter will be fast enough that you don’t need it, and it will only slow you down on those rare occurrences that a bird comes in close.  

#4 Be patient and wait for the birds to get close to you.

#5 Relax. It gets exciting when the birds come in, but take a breath, enjoy the moment, and keep your awareness on tracking the head of the birds.

Camera Settings

#1 – Put your camera on Shutter priority. The idea that manual is better is a myth. You’ve paid a lot of money for your camera and now it’s time to make it work for you. We’re going to tell the camera what shutter speed we want and it’s going to figure out everything else. If we're constantly fiddling and adjusting with manual mode, then we're constantly missing shots.

#2 – Put the shutter on 1/1000^th. If birds are far away we can go down to 1/750^th, but when a bird is close, and we’re zoomed in, then we have to have a fast shutter to stop action their flight.

#3 – Use Spot metering. The background changes as you track the birds. It gets dark, it gets bright, and it gets everything in between. This confuses matrix metering. However, if you can keep the center focus/exposure on the bird, then the camera will expose specifically for the bird and not everything else.

#4 – On bright sunny days, set exposure compensation to -1. Spot metering with exposure comp to -1 means the bodies will be a touch dark, but the heads will retain more detail in the whites and highlights. It’s not ideal, but that’s the way it goes for advanced shooting. Also, check in with the histogram when lighting conditions change. It really is the only way to know your exposure.

#5 – Use the selective focus in the center of your view screen. You want that focus on the bird, and more importantly, you want that exposure reading coming from the bird. If you’re using another method that’s getting you great shots, then keep using it, but if not, then this will help.

#6 – Use the continuous servo for continuous focus and taking rapid images. You’re going to get a lot of images, but many of them will be out of focus and soft. It’s just the nature of the shooting.  You will get better images the more you shoot, the more you anticipate and track the birds, and the better you get at focusing.

The big deal with photographing eagles is the light. You’ve got to have bright sunny days and there is simply no way around it. High-end equipment can help, but it’s still tough.

This is the fast and short guide, but  it's how I shoot and I know many of will be going out soon.  So, good shooting, put your gear to the test, and come back with stunning images.

Mike

Mike Busby Photography

Mike’s School of Photography