OK, maybe not wrong. But the vast vast majority of the books and websites say you should use continuous autofocus (with some or all focus points enabled) to enable the best rate of success for capturing birds in flight.

This is what I did for..well..ever since I started trying to capture birds in flight.

You've seen a few of my recent shots, I'll toss some in here :

DSC_5867-Edit by Zack, on Flickr

DSC_5866-Edit by Zack, on Flickr

DSC_7832-Edit by Zack, on Flickr

These were all done using my "new" way of doing things which I will describe shortly. The old way sure, it netted me a few great shots, like these:

DSC_4411 by Zack, on Flickr

DSC_4434 by Zack, on Flickr

DSC_4636 by Zack, on Flickr

DSC_4657 by Zack, on Flickr

But, there were always WAY more misses than hits. That swamp trip above, there were almost 600 pictures taken. I came away with under a hundred that were even worth looking at, and even fewer worth posting. Why? Because AF-C just plain isn't good enough, and Nikon's implementation of focus priority for AF-C ALSO sucks.

I came up with a better way. I'm not claiming it as my invention or anything, but I sure haven't seen it discussed anywhere that I can recall.

The basic flow goes like this (and I apologize to you Canon guys, you may or may not be able to do this - I have no idea) :

You need to have back button focus turned on, and you need to have focus turned OFF for the shutter button.

Your camera needs to be set in single shot focus (AF-S on Nikon) and with a single focus point activated.

Your shutter can be whatever you want, I use continuous high without flash, continuous low with flash to keep things sane.

The trick is the autofocus custom setting for AF-S focus priority. (I believe it will be custom a-2 or nearby to that) It will not allow the shutter to trip unless it has focus confirmation. You guys that have ever messed with focus trap stuff will be familiar with the basic premise. Oddly, focus priority doesn't seem to function at ALL on AF-C on my D7200. My D7100 was the same. Why they broke it, I have no idea.

Method: Hold shutter button down. It won't do anything unless you have focus. Manual focus to get close enough to track the bird in flight, but not trigger. Once you're on target, start tapping the back button to focus. Each tap should rattle off a few shots of perfectly focused images (assuming your shutter speed is high enough and whatnot) because it reacquires and reconfirms focus with each tap.

My proof?

This is a composite stack of 27 images of a Mississippi kite taken over several bursts. He was pretty far away so there's not a lot of detail to be had (cropped in significantly) but looking at the OVERALL bird, best I can tell every single shot was in near perfect focus.

27 shot composite by Zack, on Flickr

To get 27 shots of the same bird in focus like this using the AF-C spray and pray method would likely have required a couple HUNDRED attempts.

Not all Nikon users will be able to do this (I'm looking at you, D3xxx and possibly 5xxx users) and again, I can't confirm a similar method is possible for Canon users. Please test and confirm this for me Canon guys, and add your relevant specific info here if you don't mind!

Now that I think about it, a similar result *may* be obtainable using af-s and continuous shooting on the main shutter button (for the ones who can't program a back button for AF), but you'd have to be really careful not to torque the camera going on and off the shutter button so much.


Thoughts, questions, comments, concerns?

I've posted an overview of my workflow before..but I'll explain it again, perhaps in a bit more detail.

It all starts with shooting in raw, exposed to the right, usually about +1 stop over what the meter thinks it should be. I use histogram to confirm. I want to see peaks nearly touching the right side. Highlights will look blown in preview, but can be fixed later.

Once in lightroom, I correct for lens distortion and chromatic aberration (if present), bring the exposure back down to "normal", then set it up so the highlights and shadows are looking right. This is done with the highlight/shadow/white/black sliders. A general starting place is -100 highlights, +100 shadows (but it varies with each image, and by subject matter so after setting them to the max/min, I tweak it again by sight and by alt+clicking the slider, same goes for the white/black points) I usually dial in a little of contrast and clarity, but rarely above ~30 of each, and often less. The h/s/w/b sliders allow you to manually fine tune the contrast and exposure. Every once in a while a picture will need to have the levels/curves fiddled with, but that's rare. The dehaze slider makes an even more rare appearance because it often does more harm than good, but when used correctly it's amazing.

To get what to my eyes looks like accurate color representation, I will occasionally have a bit of a fiddle with the vibrance and saturation sliders...usually up a bit on the vibrance and down a bit on the saturation. Some pictures need a bit more work on this than others, going into the specific color channels and tweaking them as needed but that's usually only for flowers with their rich coloring. Some shots just work without modification (this is usually true for birds/animals, but the sky usually gets a dab of minus on the luminance to bring out the blue)

Edit: Noise reduction is left at default settings in lightroom. Exposing to the right means you can get shots that are relatively noise free, even at higher ISO and what noise does appear is not distracting.


Lightroom can handle sharpening and masking to end up like what you get from the unsharp mask filter in photoshop, but I prefer to use photoshop to do a manual layer and mask and apply sharpening only to specific areas that can benefit from it by hand painting it onto the image, and tweak the amount so it helps, but isn't distracting. Also while in photoshop, I'll take care of any sensor spots or bugs flying by or whatever.

Final exports are done in lightroom (it's easier there)


I know it sounds like a lot of work, but once you've established a good flow going, it doesn't take more than a minute or two per image.

There are two options in AF-C. Release and Focus.

Neither of them appears to do anything useful.

That's why I've come up with a better way to get sharp images.

The issue is how AF-C focus priority works.

I've been tinkering with it a bit more. If you've got AF-ON set to the back button, the shutter will fire whether it's in focus or not. Camera plain doesn't care.

However, if you are actively and constantly holding the AF-ON, it acts a bit more like what you would expect focus priority to be like. Still not anywhere near 100% and can't quite compete with the results I'm getting from the AF-S trick, but it's better.

If you disable the back button and instead move focusing to the shutter, AF-C focus priority works as expected. It will not click the shutter unless it has a confirmation.

This is all well and good, but I prefer to have the actions mapped separately, call it a habit.

More testing is definitely required but at this point I'm still saying that AF-S and bumping the back button gives more accurate and more consistent results than anything AF-C, at least with my D7200. Fancy cameras may well be different.