Catching a Heron in flight photo – you don’t need luck

As I’ve related in another article, for much of the year I now carry a Nikon Z50 camera on my dog walks, with the 50-250 kit lens. It’s a very light camera, with enough telephoto power to keep me happy most of the time. A few days ago, I saw a heron by the far bank of our local storm water management pond, whose true purpose has never stopped the wildlife from enjoying it. I immediately started planning for getting a heron in flight photograph.

This post illustrates how well the Z50 responded, along with some comments about planning on the fly. I’ve chosen to show all the images in this series, including the duds, to show how this kind of photography works in real life. I just converted RAW to jpg.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity

My preparation consists of two things. Firstly, I have set up my Z50 so that U1 resets the camera to a “normal” set-up. For me this is single frame, aperture priority, f8, AF-C, dynamic area AF, auto ISO. My U2 is continuous high, shutter priority, AF-C, 1/1250 sec, auto area AF, auto ISO. This is what I think of as my “birds in flight” mode.

Secondly, I get the Z-50 fired up, set on U1, with the lens cap off and ready to go as soon as I near the interesting part of my dog walk, because you never know when you will see something.

Opportunity is finding a Great Blue Heron

From one side of the pond, I can see most of the bank area pretty easily, so I know if there is going to be an opportunity. Later in the year, with more foliage on the trees and bushes, it won’t be quite as simple, but it certainly helps in early Spring to get a clear view. With a 50-250mm kit lens, this is the kind of image I can get across the narrow direction of this pond. For these static shots, I use the U1 setting.

Usually I’ll take one or two shots, just in case the heron does something interesting, like catch a fish.

Continuing around the pond, the heron hasn’t moved much, and I’m anticipating trying to creep up on it once I get to his (or is it “her”) side of the pond. Not really likely to happen, especially with my dog along, so I take a couple more shots from afar just in case.

Including a “portrait” orientation to get the reflection in as well.

On this day, Opportunity had a sale on, because I saw another early-morning walker coming around the pond in the opposite direction. From previous experience, I was pretty sure the heron would take off as soon as the lady got close, so I got off the path and scrambled down to the water’s edge to get an unobstructed view. I flipped the Z-50 into U2 mode, and got off another shot while I waited, getting the lens in focus.

As soon as I saw the bird tense up, I held down back-button focussing and started shooting in continuous mode.

The first two shots were critical – if I had delayed another half second, these would have been missed.

The next ones in the series are mostly luck; it all depends on the bird’s wing position and the particular bit of scenery that happens to be behind it at the moment the shutter fires. However, there is some skill involved in keeping the bird in the frame. I find this easier on a mirrored camera – it seems to me I get more chances of seeing where the subject is, while on the Z50 it seems to me that there is a lot of time where I am literally in the dark.

The captions show the times recorded on each image.

Just as a matter of interest, in this frame you can see the lady on the path behind.

In the remaining shots, I alternated between lagging behind on my panning and overcompensating and getting ahead. However, cropping in post will hide my errors!

Not bad for five minutes work

And there you have it – 14 shots in one 2-3 second burst. Two good shots at take-off and one, maybe two, in flight where the heron is in focus and there isn’t too much confusion in the background.

The two thoughts I’d like you to take away are these:

If I had had to change all the settings from static subject to bird in flight, I would never have got any photos at all. Turning the dial from U1 to U2 made this all possible. For a static bird, you want to be able to focus on an eye and throw the background out of focus. For the bird flying, the auto area AF works really well, so long as there is nothing else (like tree branches) between the bird and the camera. Just this one change would take too long to make. Doing the shutter speed as well – forget it!

Normally, it’s impossible to predict what an animal will do, but once in a while, the stars align and you can get in position and be ready to capture the moment of action – your job is to notice what’s happening and take advantage of what the stars are offering.

Here are my favourite edits from this series:

I suppose I could also claim that I took my dog walk early in the morning to better my chances of having a smooth water surface, but the truth is that I have a black dog, and she just gets too hot later in the day during warm weather.