What stunning photos! I just joined this forum in the past week, so I'm new to seeing your work. I want to be able to take great bird photos and plan to buy a camera next year. Do you have any tips beyond the particular Canon model that you use? How about the lens? Thank you for sharing these beautiful shots.

BEEEEEEyutiful!!!!

As always, stunning photos. You're lucky. All I'm seeing around here right now are Juncos and Blue Jays. I sure hope I get visits by some of the birds that came last winter (Bluebirds, Pine Siskins, and Common Redpolls), or it will be a very boring winter.

I am always amazed at the quality of your photos. Simply beautiful!

These pictures are magnificent! I wish I had bought the Canon instead of the Panasonic! but I suspect the photographer behind the lens makes all the difference.

Could you share the setting you used. I am just now making myself learn to use my camera properly.

I have all the same birds here.

glenda

Thanks to all for your very nice comments,

We love to share our birds... it adds to our joy of them when others enjoy them also. :)

jannd and glenda -
We shoot with Canon S3 and S5 cameras to which we often attach a Sony 1.7x Teleconverter:

We shoot in Manual mode and adjust settings for each shot or series. There are just too many variables of light, and distance, and composition from shot to shot, so we can't recommend any specific setting. Generally tho:
We keep the ISO setting as low as possible (to minimize noise).
We use Spot metering as a guide to set our exposures to -1/3 at the brightest part of the bird. (to avoid blowing whites).
We shoot in High Continuous burst mode (a very modest 2+ frames/sec on our cameras)... and usually capture several or as many frames as possible while the birds are in our viewfinder. You never know when that one lovely pose may be offered. :)

Otherwise, our best advice is...
Spend as much time with your birds as you can, and take a LOT of pictures of them. Getting close is paramount, and they do become accustomed to your presence after awhile. Don't be afraid to experiment, and try to understand what settings and circumstances caused the blurry, dark, blown, and out-of-focus shots you get. Learning to use your camera takes practice, and nothing will improve your photos more.

Hope this is helpful.

Happy birding all,

Kenn

Wow, Kenn-thank you for taking the time to help new photographers. Your advice to get as close as possibl, use bursts, and practice constantly applies to all levels of bird photography! Don't forget to mention the importance of keeping light low and behind you if at all possible. Early morning, later afternoon usually have best lighting conditions.

I have my own policy, though-if in doubt..TAKE THE PHOTO! It's digital, so can just delete bad pics.

DB bot me a second terabyte hard drive, so I'll shoot 2000 pics in an outing, edit and save maybe 20-30, pick out a few for my web album, then after getting IDs on all birds, delete the original file.

I move all photo files to the second hard drive, yet my Picasa Web album screen saver slide show will find them, add my web album, and even throw in pics with my, or my daughter's name from other people's web albums for the slide show (I don't know how it knows her name??)

Rachel, I need to check out the terabyte. I have an older computer with not a lot of space left on the hard drive and it worries me...a lot.

I take lots of pictures, mostly the farm and garden in the warm seasons and birds in winter. I need to be really good about deleting often or transferring to cd's. The disadvantage to the cd is finding the darned picture when you want it.

glenda

Thank you so much for the info and tips, Kenn. Most helpful! Your photos are just spectacular.