Master Bird Photography: Canon 7D Mark II Settings Revealed

if you're wondering how i clicked these classic shots of birds and you'd like to click similar pictures then stick around

in this video i'll teach you all the camera settings that go into clicking pictures like these

[Music] i'm girish menon and i just show up on your screen and start talking about

photography i offer you free photography tips that will help you to click better pictures and i release a new video every

week so please subscribe so that you don't miss out this was at bharatpur bird sanctuary in

india i clicked these pictures with the canon 300 millimeter f4 is lens

on a canon 7d mark ii camera before we talk about focus and exposure let's look at the lesser spoken about

settings on the canon 7d mark ii i set my image quality to raw always raw files are uncompressed files that

let me adjust the white balance color correct my pictures and counter lens abnormalities through

software such as adobe photoshop image review off

i'm almost always clicking in the burst mode i don't need to look at my pictures after i click them because there's no

time for that red clicking wildlife beep disabled obviously you don't want your camera

beeping every time it achieves focus release shutter without card off this is very important setting it off

prevents me from pressing down the shutter release button when there's no card in the camera so that i don't think

i'm clicking pictures when i'm not lens aberration correction disabled in the camera but i'll apply lens

corrections in adobe lightroom later this corrects distortion vignetting and other abnormalities that every lens has

i set my white balance to awb which is auto white balance auto lighting optimizer off

this setting when turned on pulls out details in the shadows this can be useful in tricky situations but it only

affects jpeg files so it's best to leave it off picture style neutral

i like to see my colors muted it's just an easier starting point for color correction

and then long exposure noise reduction of

high iso speed noise reduction off noise reduction can be applied in an

editing software if needed it's important to check how it affects the image before deciding whether or not to

use it too much of it makes pictures look unnatural i never use

it highlight tone priority off turning this on corrects your exposure

in a way that highlights a pulled back since i'm always spot metering and checking my exposures all the time it's

no use having it on hdr mode disable hdr i don't like hdr never did

now let's go to the autofocus menu here we have different options which are combinations of three main settings

the tracking sensitivity accelerate or decelerate tracking and af point auto switching

so instead of choosing one of these i go to the custom menu settings configure my menu 1

select items to register and have them here they are grayed out right now because i

have already registered them on my custom menu i set my tracking sensitivity to locked

on the lower the value the longer the same subject is tracked if it leaves the af

point i choose locked on because i have my autofocus area set to single point

and i choose one of the 65 focus points as per the composition that i desire and place the eye of the creature on that

point so i want my focus locked on the eye at all times accelerate or decelerate tracking i have

it to one canon explains that with zero stable focus can be achieved on subjects that

do not accelerate or decelerate plus one and plus two are suitable for subjects that move suddenly accelerate

or stop af point auto switching 0

this setting is irrelevant for me because it takes effect with 65 point auto selection

zone af large zone af and af point expansion whereas i am always on single point

now this is an interesting setting ai servo first and second image priority this of course is relevant only when you

are using your camera in the burst mode which i always am and i always set my auto focus mode to ai servo

when it is set to ai servo as long as i have my shutter release button lightly pressed down the camera will continue to

update focus all the time now with this setting i decide whether or not my camera should go ahead and

take the first picture even if the subject is not in focus when i click it

setting the ai server first image priority to release means that the camera will record the

first image even if the subject is not in focus whereas if i set the priority on focus

it'll get going only once the subject is in focus i set both my first and second image

priority to focus this may slow me down for a couple of seconds if the camera is not able to

lock focus on my subject straight away but i'd rather ensure that my subject is in focus

than end up with a bunch of out of focus photos select af area select mode

i am just interested in the single point and the point within the point for reasons that i've already mentioned

another interesting setting orientation linked af point setting it to separate af points point

only means that i can select a different single focus point when my camera is horizontal and a different point when

it's vertical so that way i can have different focus points

selected when i switch from one orientation to the other af point display during focus all

constant that way i can see all my points so i see where i'm going

now let's talk about the playback menu highlight alert enable so that i can see blinkies when

any part of my picture is overexposed once these settings are in place i don't need to change them ever

even if i remove my camera battery and don't put one back for a long time these settings won't change

when i'm clicking birds with a 300 mil f4 lens i keep my aperture to 4. at 4 i'm letting in all the light that

this lens can take in and at the same time i ensure that the background goes completely out of focus

just have a look at the extent to which the background has gone out of focus in each of these images with plenty of

light coming in at f4 i can set a lower iso value lower iso means better image quality

then all i need to do is balance the shutter speed to match the aperture and iso combination for the available light

i use spot metering to help me set the exposure for these images i identified the

brightest area of the frame spot metered that area and then over exposed that spot metered reading by about two stops

i like to ensure that my shutter speed is at least one over two fiftieth of a second when i'm using this lens the

guideline for shutter speed is that it needs to be at least as fast as one over the focal length so for this lens it

should be around one over three twentieth of a second but considering the fact that the 300 ml mill lens is

not so super telephoto and small and light one over 250 works just fine for images

like these if my shutter speed is too slow when the exposure scale is balanced i'll increase

the iso value and try again with the exposure in place i'll select a single focus point depending on my

composition and align that point with the eye of the bird and with that i'm ready to click my pictures i'm sure

you'll be able to click much better pictures using your new firm knowledge about the canon 7d mark ii for bird

photography i'm girish menon please subscribe to my channel to watch a new video every week that will help you to

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