MARKUS VARESVUO

FREEZING MOVEMENT

This chapter looks at freezing movement, fully or partially, in existing light.

Movement is probably easiest to freeze when photographing waterfowl that are calmly swimming. It gets more difficult with flying falcons, and the biggest challenges come with small birds that are flying fast and erratically.

The rule of thumb is that the bigger the bird, the slower its movements, which makes taking sharp action shots easier. So where a shutter speed of 1/500 second is fast enough for capturing a raptor calmly gliding in the sky, catching a small bird in the middle of its flight requires at least 1/3200 second if you want to freeze the bird all the way to its wing tips.

When focusing on feeding waders, I have found that the shutter speed needs to be surprisingly high, at least 1/1000 second to freeze any movement of the head and bill.

The focal length also plays a role when setting the shutter speed. Longer lenses need faster shutter speeds to eliminate the camera shake caused by longer focal lengths. Advanced telephoto lenses (300–800mm) have sophisticated stabilizers that effectively reduce camera shake, producing remarkably sharp images even when shooting handheld with low shutter speeds.

Another factor affecting the shutter speed is that the closer the bird is to the photographer, the greater its angular velocity, which requires a faster shutter speed.

The King Eider taking off was captured with a handheld camera while standing in a small boat in rolling seas. Almost without exception, bigger ducks will take off into a headwind, which reduces their speed, and therefore the shutter speed can be slower than when photographing a bird flying close by with the wind at its tail. I used a 500mm f/4.0 telephoto lens with the stabilizer on. Even though the day was overcast, I had enough light to take flight shots. I set the shutter speed at 1/2000 second knowing that it would freeze the bird’s head and body completely at takeoff. With this speed, there is some blurring of the wing tips, foot, and splashing water, but it is so minimal that you can say the action is frozen.

Action shots in general, and flight shots in particular, have been close to my heart all through my career as a photographer. For action photography, changing from film to digital was like changing from a horse cart to a jet. The mere fact that photographers are now able to take thousands of shots of any given situation without spending a fortune on film is a true revolution. Access to ISO values that would have been beyond our wildest dreams with film cameras is another major improvement with digital technology.

The image of the flying White-throated Dipper was taken in southern Finland during a week of clear skies and very low temperatures in March. The bright sunshine, and the way it was softened by reflecting off the snow, made the conditions optimal for taking flight shots. I took thousands of frames, and nearly a thousand of them are flight shots.

A King Eider taking off (Somateria spectabilis)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 500mm f/4.0, 1/2000 second, f/5.0, ISO 500, continuous focus with 45 focusing points, handheld camera. Vardø, Norway, April 2006.

When I took this image, I wanted to freeze movement completely. After many attempts I came to realize that the shutter speed should be at least 1/3200 second. The White-throated Dippers soon got used to me, and I was able to get close enough to use my 300mm f/2.8 lens, which focuses very quickly. The only way to follow the White-throated Dippers in the viewfinder as they were speeding along the narrow river was by photographing handheld, not on a tripod.

Red-throated Loons nest on small marsh ponds that have no fish. The parents fly to the nearby lakes to fish, and they carry their catch in their bills back to the nesting pond to feed the chicks. The birds approach and descend very quickly, always into a headwind, and land on the pond with water splashing. It is a spectacular sight but rather difficult to capture. Photographing in the beautiful late evening light is a balancing act between using the fastest possible shutter speed and keeping the ISO value at a reasonable level to not lose image quality.

When they cover longer distances, Red-throated Loons fly in a steady pattern at an even pace, making it easy to get sharp images using shutter speeds as slow as 1/1000–1/1600 second, but to freeze a landing bird at close range requires the shutter speed to be at least 1/2500 second. Before it lands, one major challenge is to spot the approaching bird in time and to keep it inside the focusing area during the short time it’s in landing mode. You don’t want to start shooting too early because the buffer will easily fill up before the best part of the action.

A White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus)
Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 300mm f/2.8, 1/3200 second, f/2.8, ISO 500, continuous focus with 45 focusing points, handheld camera. Liljendahl, Finland, March 2005.

A shutter speed of 1/1000–1/1600 second is enough to capture a cruising White-tailed Eagle with a 500mm lens. However, the situation captured in the photo on page 91 needed a much faster shutter speed. A frantic Common Gull was trying to chase the eagle away from its nesting rock. It kept diving down on the eagle from above, again and again.

A Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata)
Canon EOS-1D Mark III, 500mm f/4.0, 1/2500 second, f/9.0, ISO 1600, continuous focus with extended central focusing point, Gitzo tripod, Manfrotto 501 video head, blind. Vaala, Finland, June 2009.

I noticed the situation developing in time and was able to increase the ISO value to 1000 and set the shutter speed to 1/2500 second, which I estimated would be enough to freeze the Common Gull in its nosedive.

To illustrate how fast the situation was, note that I was using my camera at maximum shooting speed, which is 9 fps. Even so, the frame before the action shot shows the Common Gull clearly above the White-tailed Eagle, and in the frame after the action the gull is again a foot or so above the eagle. Skill alone is not enough to capture the perfect shot—luck is needed, too. The gull was straddling the eagle’s neck and pecking its head for a few hundredths of a second, and the last frame was exposed at the exact right moment.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 500mm f/4.0, 1/2500 second, f/9.0, ISO 1000, continuous focus with an extended central focusing point, handheld camera, boat. Flatanger, Norway, July 2010.

Frame before the action of a White-tailed Eagle and Common Gull (Haliaeetus albicilla, Larus canus)

Frame after the action of a White-tailed Eagle mobbed by a Common Gull

The action: A White-tailed Eagle mobbed by a Common Gull