Although I’m not an expert on the subjects of sports photography or bird photography (or “BIF,” as aficionados write) using really long lenses, I have had some opportunities to pick up some skills in these areas recently. Since one of my photography contacts recently wrote and asked for some advice about using a longer lens to photograph birds, I thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve found to work for me.

First, if I were specializing in these types of photography I would likely use different equipment than what I currently have. For example, I know that many folks find the big prime telephotos to be ideal for their work and some prefer the very large, heavy, and expensive large aperture versions. Great lenses for sure, but not exactly suitable for what I do – so my long lens is a Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS. I shoot a full frame Canon 5D. This is a great camera for urban and wild landscapes and other types of photography that I tend to do, but it would not typically be regarded as ideal for the type of shooting I’m writing about today. Something with a faster burst mode might be better for those focusing on this type of shooting, and in many cases the advantages of full-frame might be outweighed by other factors.

That said, what have I learned so far? In no particular order, a list:

• Hit rates can be quite low. If you are the kind of photographer who likes to think a lot about The Shot before pressing the button, or who gets frustrated when not every shot is good – get over it. You are going to take a lot of bad photographs, but you’ll eventually start to get better and to get some good ones.
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  Tracking moving subjects takes practice. A lot of practice. In many ways it is like learning a sport – you need to do the thing many times, fail many times, begin to succeed, and learn from the process. The first few times I tried panning with a pack of bicycle racers my success rate was terribly low – lots of shots of rear wheels, tilted way out of horizontal and so forth. Eventually I began to smooth out the panning process, reserve a part of my attention for keeping the camera more or less level. Eventually I had more success when I focused up putting the center of the subject in a certain part of the frame, rather than just aiming and hoping.
• Turning off all focus points except the center AF point can help. I find this to be especially true with birds in flight. Unless the background is clear sky the camera will often AF on everything but the bird. With only one AF point active the trick becomes getting it on the moving bird, but if you can do this you’ll focus on the right subject.
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  Sometimes pre-focusing can be your friend. In particular with sports that follow a set path – like bicycle racing time trials – you may have more success by applying your careful analytical skills to setting up a shot. Find a good location, pre-focus on a place where the rider will likely be and turn off AF, begin tracking the rider before arrival at the pre-focus spot, and fire away. This can work with birds in flight, but in practice I find it much less reliable there since the darn birds tend to fly all over the place. However, you can sometimes determine that birds are following a particular route and position yourself accordingly. Along the California coast the birds often seem to follow particular routes relative to tops of cliffs or rocks that extend into the water. Spend a few minute studying this and you may locate invisible “sky trails” that they follow.
• Your camera’s “servo” mode may help in some cases, but it isn’t necessarily a panacea with subjects that really move fast. Sorry, you’ll have to figure this one out on your own. :-)
• Burst mode can be your friend. When subjects move very fast – both in terms of their motion through space and in terms of they own motion of legs, wings, etc. – it can be important to get multiple images. Even the relatively leisurely burst rate of my 5D is very useful. But you still need to think a lot about timing the shots – just holding the shutter down without thinking will result in a very low hit rate. Sometimes it is still better to take just a single well-timed frame. I’ll often put the camera in burst mode but still sometimes only shoot a single frame.
• The longest focal length is not always best. In fact, I don’t actually shoot my 100-400mm lens at 400mm all that often. In other cases I’ll use the 70-200 instead.

A few other perspectives I’ve picked up from using the longer lens and from shooting these wildlife and sports subjects:

• Not all sports and wildlife shots require long lenses. In fact, some of the most interesting shots in both categories can take the opposite approach and use wide lenses.
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  I’ve also learned more about how very long lenses can be great for certain types of landscape shots. Although I’ve always tended to think in ultra-wide, wide, normal, or shot tele terms when I do landscape, the first time out with the long lens I got a series of landscape shots that I could simply not have taken with the shorter lenses.
• Developing the high speed thinking that you must do when you photograph highly active subjects can improve your photographic work in other areas. If you are comfortable framing a composition given a few minutes to think about it, trying to apply your composition skills to an image in which everything is in flux will really sharpen your “seeing” skills.
• Working outside of your subject comfort zone – e.g. sports for the landscape shooter – has a bunch of positive effects. Not the least of these is understanding how these other subjects can be handled in a way that is every bit as aesthetically interesting as the subjects you may be comfortable with.