More Birds from the Cold Snap

Taken over the last few days of snowfall...

Photographing birds in the snow is great fun, but actually shooting whilst snow is falling can be a real challenge. In order to protect my camera, I used a home-made sleeve on my lens, with a waterproof cover over the top. Even so, it can be tricky to keep everything dry. These shots were taken on a beanbag using a tree stump as support. The difficult part is getting sharp images: some were taken at ISO 200 but at times the light levels were so low that I had to push up to ISO 400, which I try to avoid. Still -sharpness should always be the foremost consideration. Shutter speeds were often around 1/250 although I have found it possible to get sharp images even down at 1/60 - but it reduces your hit rate a lot.. The beauty of many of these pictures was the blanket of snow acting as a giant reflector and bouncing light back to illuminate the underside of the birds. The other tip is - take a lot of pictures..! In just a couple of hours I shot over 150 images.. this is not unusual..!