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)

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[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