In areas with four seasons like Japan, especially in deciduous broadleaf forests, the leaves fall in winter, making it easier to observe wild birds perched on trees.
Every year from autumn to winter, I enjoy shooting wild birds with a digital camera.
In Katsushika Ward, Tokyo, where I currently live, there is a metropolitan park called Mizumoto Park, which is managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. This park is the largest park in the 23 wards of Tokyo, and is characterized as a waterside park with a large water area.
In this park, poplar trees and metasequoia forests spread out, and rare wild birds such as kingfishers and goshawks lives near waterside area.
I will share photos of wild birds taken last winter and from autumn to winter this year.
When photographing wild birds which lives near waterside in particular, it is difficult to get close, so you need a telephoto lens with a focal length of 400mm to 800mm on a full frame. The photos mentioned below were taken by Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds Mount and Leica L Mount digital cameras.
Wild birds’ movements are unpredictable, so please set your camera mode to the shutter speed priority mode (S mode) to 1/500 to 1/4000 seconds and the ISO to AUTO.
The ISO will become high at 6400 to 12800, and the image quality will worsen from the noise. But you can use software such as DxO PureRAW4 or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to remove noise and generate a noise-free image.
One thing to note is that DxO PureRAW4 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can only remove noise in RAW format, so be sure to record in RAW.
