Pre-capture technology

Biird photography is a passion shared by many photographers. Up to now, if you thought it was just too hard to capture great pictures of these elusive subjects, especially as they fly, now is the time to re-think your assessment. There is a new technology that puts the odds in your favor.

Actually, it’s not that new. Several years ago I met a man during one of my photo tours who had an Olympus camera, and he explained to me what pre-capture was all about. I thought it was interesting, but since I wasn’t looking for a new camera system to buy I dismissed it and, to be honest, forgot about it.

I just concluded a tour to south Texas in which my group photographed the beautiful bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, and then we had 3 days of photographing birds from various blinds. My local guide had the Olympus OM-1, and she demonstrated the pre-capture technology to me. Instantly I was impressed. This is a game changer for bird photography. Using my Canon R5, I was struggling to react fast enough to capture flight shots as various species of birds alighted on perches with food bait. When they took flight, again it was a contest between their incredible speed and my typical human reaction time. They usually won. I got a few shots I’m happy with, but the OM-1 virtually never struck out. The camera captured flight shots every time.

Here is how it works. A bird is perched on something, and your camera is positioned on a tripod such that you are happy with the composition. You need to leave some room in the frame for the bird’s forward flight path (assuming you accurately guess in which direction it will fly). Before the bird takes flight, you press the shutter halfway down and the camera starts shooting. At 20 frames per second (or whatever the fastest frame rate is on your camera), it will take a lot of frames.

When the bird finally flies, push the shutter all the way down and the shooting stops. The camera then deletes all of the frames except the last several frames as programmed by you. So, if your camera shoots at 20 fps and you elect to retain the last 7 frames, that time period is 1/3 second.

Capturing large birds taking flight and landing, like the crested caracara on the prevous page, is relatively easy. They are slow fliers and it takes them a bit of time to spread their large wings and work the air. Smaller birds, though, like the pyrhhuloxia, below, and the green jay on the next page, are like bullets. They are so fast that it takes patience and persistence to capture these kinds of flight pictures.

The number of frames you can shoot with this technology depends on the individual camera. Fuji offers this technology, and Nikon does as well in their Z-9 model. I’ve heard that the Nikon software isn’t as good as the Olympus and Fuji, but since I don’t shoot Nikon I can’t confirm that.

According to Canon rumors, there is supposed to be an imminent major release of firmware for the Canon R5 that will give this camera the pre-capture technology. The brand new Canon R6 Mark II comes with this remarkable feature. When enabled, similar to the Olympus, a half-press of the shutter tells the camera to begin firing and buffering frames. Once the shutter is fully depressed, the camera disregards all of the frames except the last half second of the buffered pre-click images.

This is such a valuable technology because birds display their most beautiful wing positions when taking flight and landing. You can use pre-capture in both scenarios.

An alternative

If you don’t have pre-capture yet, and you are working with bird set-up shots in which you bait them with seeds, nuts, mealworms, or suet, place the perch with the food about 15 to 20 feet from a tree or some kind of protective cover. Birds will first assess the scene from the safety of the cover, and then they will swoop down to eat. 15 to 20 feet is far enough so the birds have to fly to your perch as opposed to gliding down to it, and you can prefocus on the point where you expect them to land. The camera is mounted on a tripod. You can watch the birds leave the protective tree with your eyes, and that gives you the time to starting shooting.