Birds Survey - Your A7IV Settings for Small Fast Moving Birds in Flight (BIF)

[Embeeous]

Hi all - I'm struggling with shooting small fast birds in flight (BIF) with the A7IV. I have created a brief survey that would really help me out, and I would be more than happy to share the results of this survey with this group. I've already received some great responses to this survey on other sites, thought I'd post it here as well. Again, I'm looking strictly for A7IV shooters focused on small fast BIF for this one. Thank you in advance for your participation.

Sony A7IV Settings for Small Fast Bird in Flight (BIF)

Please click the link to complete this form.

form.jotform.com

 

[Brownie]

Have you ever seen this article in Mirrorless Comparison? It describes camera attributes across brands and ranks them. Each camera's description includes suggested settings. There's a link near the top of the article that will take you to a table summary. The A7M4 is ranked #5 among all cameras for BIF.

The Best Mirrorless Cameras for Birds in Flight Ranked - Mirrorless Comparison

A few years ago, our reader Alfredo suggested an idea for an article. Since we test the autofocus performance of many cameras at the same red kite feeding stations, why not publish a list of all the cameras we use with their keeper rate for birds in flight? I liked ... Read more

mirrorlesscomparison.com

I don't shoot BIF so can't help with your survey. Good luck.

 

[iamdlewis]

I gave you some answers. The thing about small birds is that your focus area type should be determined by the expected distance between the bird and the background. The closer the background the smaller the focus area type you should use.

The 2 things that will help you the most are:
1. Knowing what the bird you are photographing traits are. There isn't much size difference between a Lark, Sparrow and Swallow but because of their traits I can say that the Lark will be the easiest and the Sparrow the most difficult even though the Swallow is by far the most agile. The Lark will be fairly straight in flight a few feet over the field brush, the Sparrow will stick close to the shrubs and will generally be low when crossing open spaces and the Swallow will be acting like it is in some high performance dogfight.
2. Practicing. If you are finding that the bird is not near center frame, even is focus was missed, or just missing it outright go find larger birds to practice with. Good medium birds to practice with are ducks, cormorants, gulls and terns. There are two goals with this practice, one to quicken the time from seeing the bird to brining the camera to eye and having the bird in frame and two improve your understanding of how fast the birds move.

 

[Gaz]

I have to use the viewfinder. It seems like some habits cannot be broken.

 

[lodbrok]

Maybee a dotsight will be better for smaller birds in flight? I have it on all the time. Aspecialy for iraddic flyers like the svallows.

 

[Unframed Dave]

I have to use the viewfinder. It seems like some habits cannot be broken.

I wouldn't consider anything else.

 

[spudhead]

I have to use the viewfinder. It seems like some habits cannot be broken.

Using the viewfinder is what I use always and I did buy a dot sight way back and quickly decided it was of little use at least to me