On the cover: A cocker spaniel and a great Pyrenees exhausted from opening presents. This page: A wild jaguar on a sand bar in the Pantanal region of Brazil.
Merry Chirstmas and Happy Chanukah!
Debating which telephoto lens to buy for wildlife, and especially birds, is a challenge. In the old days, an f/2.8 or f/4 maximum aperture was essential for dealing with low light shooting because films were so slow. Diminished light is a large percentage of the photographic situations nature photographers find themselves in. The problem with telephotos that have large apertures is they are enormously expensve, very heavy, require a tripod for most people due to their weight, and they make airline travel problematic especially when you have to fly on commuter jets with their tiny overhead compartments.
On the plus side, lenses like a 600mm f/4 are incredibly sharp, offer beautiful bokeh behind subjects, and allow a lot of light into the camera so you can use fast shutter speeds with relatively low ISO settings for a minimum of noise.
As one ages, it becomes more and more difficult to carry the weight of these super telephotos. Hello shoulder and lower back pain. Goodbye low light bird photography.
Unlike years ago, there are quite a few options now. Significantly lighter zooms are available that are a fraction of the size of the big guys, many thousands of dollars less expensive, and easy to hand hold. They don't offer the enviable light gathering ability that all photographers covet, but with post-processing software like Topaz DeNoise AI, pictures that have excessive noise derived from high ISO settings north of 3200 can now be cleaned up beautifully and made to appear noise free. I've transformed photographs taken at 12,800 ISO (and even higher) into pictures that looked like I used 400 ISO thanks to the remarkable software programs available through Topaz and DXO Pure Raw 4.
It takes time to becoming comfortable using smaller maximum apertures, I know. We are so accustomed to seeking out fast long lenses. But at this point I've taken hundreds of excellent images with light, relatively inexpensive lenses in diminished light while using maximum apertures between f/7.1 and f/11. It's absolutely doable.
If I were 30 years old would I want a super telephoto? Yes. I had one for many years. Now in my 70's, I've changed. I think photography should be fun, not paintful.
Jim Zuckerman
photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com
Camera settings for BIRDS IN FLIGHT
More and more, I am photographing birds in flight in various parts of the world.
I find this particular aspect of nature photography rewarding, exciting, and fulfilling. True, it is also very challenging. It takes getting to the right location, hand-eye coordination, a lot of patience, and choosing the best camera settings. Intelligently selecting the right camera options is the most important ingredient to getting beautiful and sharp pictures of the birds.
If you've never tried to capture birds in flight, the following information should help get you started.
1. Shutter speed. The first crucial decision is how fast the shutter should be. Assuming you want sharp images, as you see in the pictures illustrating this article, the shutter should be set to 1/3200. For very small birds that fly exceedingly fast, like the monk parakeet on page 6 captured in the Pantanal region of Brazil, 1/4000 is ideal. These fast speeds require
enough light, however, and that's the challenge. In low light situations, such as deep shade, moments just after sunrise or before sunset, and when the sky is overcast, you have a choice: 1) You can raise the ISO to a very high number, or 2) you can compromise on the shutter speed.
For example, the wing beats of sandhill cranes, pictured on page 4 and at right, are much slower than most small birds. That means in a low light environment I will go as slow as 1/1600. This gathers more light by a factor of two compared to 1/3200; this could mean the differenc between shooting at 12,800 ISO versus 6400. Nevertheless, at this speed, even with cranes, I expect to see some shots with blurred wing tips.
When photographing smaller birds like
the lilac-breasted roller on page 9, I would opt for the higher ISO because 1/1600, and even 1/2500, would definitely show blur in the wings simply because this is such an incredibly fast-flying bird.
2. Lens aperture. If there is a lot of light, such as when shooting under a bright midday sun,
you have the luxury of using a small lens aperture to increase depth of field. Birds have depth, and especially if they are fairly close to you and you're shooting with a long lens, f/11 or even f/16 will insure the entire bird will be sharp (assuming a fast shutter).
Usually, though, photographers find themselves shooting in lighting situations that are not terribly bright. In those cases, the only lens aperture that makes sense is the largest one available to gather as much light as possible. This could be f/4, f/7.1 or even f/11. In this scenario, depth of field is a secondary consideration to shutter speed and ISO selection.
3. ISO. When I bought my first digital camera in 2005, a Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1600 ISO was very, very noisy while 3200 ISO
was unusable. The noise was so bad. Today, we use these ISO settings without thinking about it because the quality has increased significantly.
In addition, we have post-processing tools like Topaz Photo AI that largely eliminate noise. That's a game changer for photographers shooting in low light situations because it means we can take sharp pictures using super fast shutter speeds and not be afraid of photos ruined by excessive noise. No one likes using super high ISO settings, but if it's a choice between a blurred picture or one with noise, you have to opt for the noise. Then, in post-processing, you can deal with it.
The picture on the next page is a female redlegged honeycreeper I photographed in Costa Rica. It was landing on a feeder beneath the
canopy of the rainforest in the late afternoon. It was quite dark. My shutter speed was 1/2500 -- fast enough to freeze wing movement on large birds like eagles, hawks, ospreys, egrets and cranes, but as you can see, not quite fast enough to render the wing tips sharp on the small honeycreeper.
I didn't increase the speed of the shutter because I was already at 25,600 ISO. As you can see, there is no noise in this shot. I applied Topaz Photo AI in which I eliminated the noise as well as added some sharpening to the image. With tools like Topaz, we can take pictures that heretofore were impossible. DXO software is also superb for eliminating noise from RAW files. In some circumstances in which the noise is especially bad, I'll use DXO to process the RAW file and then apply Topaz.
4. Focus points. Birds move fast and we rely on the speed of the autofocus mechanism in our cameras to keep focus on them. Now most high-end cameras have sohisticated AF features like eye-tracking. I use this often. If the bird is far away, though, and/or if a very dark eye is surrounded by black feathers, the camera can't lock onto the eye of the bird.
An important factor that affects the autofocus mechanism is the background behind the subject. A solid blue or white sky makes tracking easy. You can actually use all of the focus points available, and even if it's tough to keep the bird in the center of the frame when using a long lens, the focus points will lock onto some part of the bird's body and hold focus on it.
Winter Wildlife Workshop
February 6 - 11, 2025y 13 - 22024
If there are busy background elements such as trees, bushes, mountain sides, or manmade structures, I switch to a center cluster of focus points. I'll typically use 9 or 15 central points.
You can also choose from a number of options for 'tracking sensitivity'. For example, "Good for subjects that move suddenly, accelerate or decelerate suddenly, or stop suddenly." Or, "good for subjects that move at a steady speed." I never use these settings simply because it's impossible to predict what you'll be photographing and how birds are going to move. I just use the default sensitivity and direct my attention to keeping the bird in the frame.
5. Image stabilitzation. I turn this feature off. You don't need it when the shutter is fast. It unnecessarily diminishes battery life
and ever so slightly slows down the camera's reaction time because it first wants to stabilize the lens before it allows the shutter to take the picture.
6. Tripod. If the stabilization is turned off, you might think this makes it imperative to use a tripod. Personally, I find that using a tripod, even with a gimbal head, is too inhibiting. Birds fly sporadically, and often there are multiple targets to photograph. That means your lens has to able to angle in any direction, including overhead, very quickly. It's impossible to photograph straight up when using a tripod, so I don't even try. I hand hold the camera and lens. If you can't support a heavy camera body and telephoto with your arms and shoulders, then you'll have to use a tripod. I understand. But in my opinion, this isn't ideal. Consider using a much lighter telephoto. §
BIREFRINGENCE
Blirefringence means double refraction in a transparent, molecularly ordered material. What this means to photographers is we can use two polarizers to bring out wild colors in a number of materials. It's a way of using science to produce art.
For example, the abstract below is simply a plastic French curve that graphic designers, architects, and fashion designers use in their work. A set of various types of curves can be purchased for a few dollars in office supply outlets and art stores like Michael's. They are clear plastic without any color patterns at all. To create the image below, I
placed the French curve on a small lightbox, as shown on the next page. Beneath the plastic curve I placed a sheet of polarizing material. This is the same substance used in filters that screw onto a camera lens to polarize light. In this form, though, it's simply a filmlike material. It is about 18 inches square and available from Edmund Scientific.
To genereate the rainbow spectrum of color, I placed a polarizing filter over the camera lens. I used a 24-105mm focal length with a filter size of 77mm. With the filter screwed onto the lens, the colors are immediately vis-
ible. By rotating the polarizing filter on the lens, the patterns of color change as does the background. Black is the most dramatic backdrop, but you can also have white or blue as in the picture at lower left. There are many other types of readily available plastic products that similarly react to double polarization, such as the plastic serving tray, below right, and some types of plastic cups, Scotch tape, and clear plastic cutlery. §
Ethiopia Photo Tour
Jan. 21 - Feb. 3, 2025
Exotic Colombia Birds
Sept. 23 to Oct. 3, 2026
Pantanal Photo Tour, Brazil
Jaguars in the wild, birds in flight, caiman, otters and more
Dec. 1 - 9, 2025
Photography Quiz
1. Maximize sharpness when shooting through a glass window by:
a. Making the lens axis perpendicular to the plane of the glass
b. Making the lens axis oblique to the plane of the glass
c. The angle of the lens to the glass doesn't matter
d. None of the above
2. When shooting midday under a blue sky, which focal length intensifies the blue color just like a polarizing filter?
a. 16mm
b. 80mm
c. 135mm
d. 400mm
3. Image stabilizaiton on a lens should be turned on all the time to insure sharp pictures.
a. True
b. False
4. What is the complementary color of brown as seen on the color wheel?
a. The color between blue and cyan
b. The color between magenta and red
c. The color between red and yellow
d. The color between green and blue
5. When the color of light is described as 'cool', that means it looks:
a. Redish
b. Yellowish
c. Bluish
d. Underexposed
6. A Kelvin temperature of 2500 is:
a. On the bluish side of the color spectrum
b. On the yellowish side of the color spectrum
c. On the reddish side of the color spectrum
d. On the greenish side of the color spectrum
7. You always need a tripod to successfully do an HDR composite of several images.
a. True
b. False
8. A tiny speck of dust on the front glass element of a telephoto lens will show up in your pictures.
a. It depends on the light
b. Never
c. Always
9. Camera lenses capture what we see with our eyes.
a. Sometimes
b. Always
c. Never
10. If you could have an f/1.4 500mm lens, it would be:
a. Way too expensive
b Way too heavy to handle
c. Way too large by volume to deal with
d. All of the above
Exposing for Snow
When we all shot film, the prevailing thinking about exposing for snow-covered landscapes was to overexpose images by about one and a half f/stops (in the pre-digital era, we usually used 1/2 f/stop increments, not 1/3 f/stops). The reasoning was that the bright snow would cause the in-camera meter to underexpose the scene, hence the overexposure compensated for this.
Remember, that was before we could immediately see our pictures. We had to develop
the film and hope for the best. Now, we not only have instant feedback, but with mirrorless cameras we see the exposure in the viewfinder before we even take the picture. That changes everything.
I don't even use the camera's meter now. No exposure compensation, no over- or underexposing based on a meter, and no guesswork. I use manual exposure mode and choose the shutter I want, the lens aperture that's appropriate for the scene, and vary the exposure by changing the ISO. On my Canon R5, I've assigned the wheel on the back of the camera body to adjust the
ISO, and I simply use my thumb to do so. Now I can see exactly what the exposure will be before I snap the shutter.
For snow, I tend to set the ISO so my pictures are slightly dark. I do this to protect the vulnerable highlights from overexposing. The last thing you want is to 'blow the highlights'; in other words, a complete loss of texture and detail. When this happens, you can't use the highlights slider in Lightroom or ACR to recover lost detail. It's gone. Sometimes you can clone
snow from another part of the picture or, possibly, from another image, into the blown out areas. When dealing with the white fur or the intricate pattern of trees branches, more than likely this isn't possible. That's why I prefer my winter pictures to be dark by about 2/3 f/stop. I can lighten them in post-processing, and then I know they will be perfectly exposed with complete highlight detail. §
UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS
Snowy Owl Workshop
Close up encounters with these beautiful birds of the North. Capture bird in flight shots in a snowy environment. Jim guides you in camera settings and technique to take the best pictures possible.
January 9 - 13, 2025
FROG & REPTILE WORKSHOP in Kansas City
This is an exciting macro workshop in which you will be able to photograph about 40 species of colorful dart frogs and exotic reptiles. Held in a hotel conference room, Jim sets up natural backgrounds for outstanding photos.
June 14 - 15, 2025
Carnival in Venice
Photograph amazing costumes in a medieval environment. We shoot inside a 16th century palace, in an iconic gondola, in a stunning bedroom with traditional Venetian decor, and at other great locations. The photography as well as the experience is phenomenal.
February 23 - March 1, 2025
eBooks
Click on any ebook to see inside
Abandoned in Georgia
April 21 - 27, 2025
What's Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing is really wrong with this image. Both of the foreground trees have nice shapes (not outstanding shapes, but 'nice'), the reflections are good, and the fog in the background adds mood to this lake in Bosque del Apache Wildlife Reserve, New Mexico.
What's missing, though, is a focal point. Something that makes it special. Bosque del Apache is a very popular place for bird photographers to capture sandhill cranes in flight as well as thousands of snow geese, so it seemed to me that's what should be added.
A photographer essentially has three options here. 1) He or she can add nothing and accept the landscape as is, 2) wait until Kingdom Comes for a bird or a
group of birds to fly into the scene in just the right place for a great composition. Plus, but in the diminished light of dawn the shutter speed has to be fast enough to freeze the bird(s) in flight plus the f/stop needs to be small enough to make everything sharp in the frame from the foreground to the background, or 3) Photoshop can be used to create what probably would have taken place within the next hundred years or so.
I chose option number three, obviously. I selected a shot of a sandhill crane in flight with an attractive wing position, turned it into a silhouette by filling the selected bird with black (Edit > fill), and then pasting it (Edit > paste) into the scene and sizing it perfectly (Edit > transform > scale). I then made the reflection by using the Photoshop plugin, Flood. §
On Safari: Kenya
March 9 - 18, 2026
SHORT AND SWEET
1. Usually I try to avoid white skies or I'll replace them with a more interesting background. But in winter, they can often be an important part of the image. This shot of Gateway Arch in St. Louis is an example. Had the sky been blue or filled with beautiful clouds, this composition wouldn't be as good.
3. Including the sun in the frame adds a dynamic element to any subject. This is sunrise in Venice, Italy during carnival. When the sun is partially blocked by the horizon, contrast is low, Within a few minutes after sunrise, contrast increases and starts to be a problem. So capture those first special moments.tt
2. Many times when shooting flocks of birds in flight, two or three birds are captured in a nice formation but they are too small in the frame. You can crop out the areas you don't want and then use Topaz Gigapixel AI to res up the image. Follow this by using by Topaz Sharpen AI. You end up with a sharp, dynamic image.
4. In images with significant contrast, like this sunset on Caddo Lake in Texas, it's important to use the shadows slider in ACR or Lightroom to lighten the dark areas of the image. This is true mostly for sidelighting and backlighting. Nature photography in particular is really all about the detail. §
Vietnam Photo Tour
October 13 - 23, 2025
ASK JIM
Every month, Jim answers a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.
Q: Jim . . . I know you are into drone photography. I'm considering buying a drone and wanted your opinion about what I should get. Robert Evans, Bend, Oregon
A: There are many factors to consider, of course. Personally, I am anxiously awaiting the DJI Mavic 4 or the Mavid 4 Pro. Everything is supposed to be improved -- the camera, the transmission from controller to drone, and the stability. Only rumors persist now. It's supposed to be released either at the end of this year or by April of next year. No one knows exactly. If you were to buy one today, I would recommend the DJI Mavic Air 3S.
Partial List of Photography Tours
2024 - 2026
SNOWY OWLS in CANADA
Jan 2025
Sept 2025
PANTANAL
Dec 2025
ICELAND DRONE TOUR
Aug/Sept 2026
WINTER WILDLIFE Feb 2025
Oct 2025
SCOTLAND'S PAST May 2026
EXOTIC COLOMBIA BIRDS
Sept/Oct 2026
CARNIVAL in VENICE
Feb 2025
Oct/Nov 2025
THE GREAT SPAIN ECLIPSE Aug 2026
ARMENIA & GEORGIA Oct/Nov 2026
Armenia & Georgia
October 26 - November 8, 2026
Student Showcase
Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same places. Everyone takes great photographs on Jim’s trips.
Charlie Williard, Fair Oaks, California Michigan's Historic Lighthouses photo tour, Holland/Belgium photo tour, Coast of France photo tour, Patagonia photo tour, and Winter Wildlife workshop.
Your score 90% - 100%: You could have been a pro 80% - 89%: Your glasses probably need a new prescription 70% - 79%: Just don’t quit your day job < 70%: You should really be using an iPhone
