Birds with my new Nikon D3100

jbird69 said:
:) :) Southern oregon.

Most places in America, if you spend a day in your car and a tank or 2 of gas, you can find some amazing wildlife.

I do live in a great area and I always carry my camera. I will stop to photograph anything (I like birds) I stopped to grab a burger at Sonic yesterday, pulled off nearby to eat it and there was a redtailed hawk on a wire. Pulled out the Nikon and walked over and started shooting when he flew.

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Get out there and take your camera!
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That is good to hear! I have a aunt in Southern Oregon, Medford to be exact. When is the best time of the year would you say to photograph wildlife? I have been to crater lake and stuff bear creek immigrant lake but never saw anything like an eagle or hawk!
 
Im in Medford!

Winter is an excellent time for hawks because they winter here. Plus they are easy to spot with no leaves in the trees. There are hawks EVERYWHERE right now. They are starting to pair up now, possibly from the false spring weve had.

There are lots of em here year round but especially in winter.

The eagles are always here. You can see them at most lakes and rivers, especially in the Klamath basin. The first eagle shots in this thread were shot at Fish Lake last fall. The ones I just posted were at Applegate reservoire.
 
I like to shoot in aperture priority. I will set my ISO depending on the lighting I have. I prefer not to go over 800 if possible. I may also adjust the exposure compensation if the light sucks. The bottom line is I try to accomplish the fastest shutter speed for the light I have. If the subject is stationary, I will increase the aperture to try to get better depth of field. For example in the photo of the white tailed kite, I set the aperture to 28 to bring the mountain into better focus. That mountain is about 50 mi away.

If you want to shoot good action shot, you can set your camera to "sports". You can check the properties on the photos later and it will tell you what all your settings were. This is a great way to learn. Then you can start tweaking things to your liking with manual settings.

Take all of this with a grain of salt because Im really new to this. Ive only been avidly shooting wildlife for about 5 months. A very close friend of mine is a professional wildlife photographer and he's been trying to beat some of this stuff into my mellon.

Hope that helps a little
 
jbird69 said:
Im in Medford!

Winter is an excellent time for hawks because they winter here. Plus they are easy to spot with no leaves in the trees. There are hawks EVERYWHERE right now. They are starting to pair up now, possibly from the false spring weve had.

There are lots of em here year round but especially in winter.

The eagles are always here. You can see them at most lakes and rivers, especially in the Klamath basin. The first eagle shots in this thread were shot at Fish Lake last fall. The ones I just posted were at Applegate reservoire.
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Awesome! I will have to plan a trip next winter. That is awesome. I will have to go visit Fish Lake and Applegate reservoire. Any more interesting birds/animals. I rarely see any deer when I go lol. Any tips? I once saw a group of like 5-6 at Ashland Park..
 
Thanks, that is very helpful...I just bought lumix g2 4/3micro not too many months ago as well and love taking photos, just am not real good at the action yet.
 
samdaman said:
Awesome! I will have to plan a trip next winter. That is awesome. I will have to go visit Fish Lake and Applegate reservoire. Any more interesting birds/animals. I rarely see any deer when I go lol. Any tips? I once saw a group of like 5-6 at Ashland Park..
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If you come in the next 3-4 months, PM me and I can show you around some. After that I am moving to Wisconsin.
 
lol nah the gloves are pretty strong and the birds are not exactly trying to crush your arm. Those are photos that I took so I was behind the camera for all of those. If you are interested in getting into it you should check around, there are orginizations in a lot of states. The only thing is that it's pretty hard to get in, they are a tight group. I've gone out on a few meets/hunts with them and all the different birds are really cool. With the reefing taking up so much of the funds, I don't have a bird of my own yet.... yet.
 
Mandragen said:
lol nah the gloves are pretty strong and the birds are not exactly trying to crush your arm. Those are photos that I took so I was behind the camera for all of those. If you are interested in getting into it you should check around, there are orginizations in a lot of states. The only thing is that it's pretty hard to get in, they are a tight group. I've gone out on a few meets/hunts with them and all the different birds are really cool. With the reefing taking up so much of the funds, I don't have a bird of my own yet.... yet.
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Nice, I want to learn I have been reading around, here in AZ it is legal, and I hear there are a lot of diff hawks. And I saw there are a couple sponsors..

Sorry for the thread jack!
 
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