Low Illumination Photography of Stationary Birds.

Five years ago, I photographed a Downy Woodpecker eating suet on my suet log to determine the best shutter speed to use for stationary birds while hand holding my E-M1.1 with its IBIS stabilization. I found there was no difference in percent of blurred images caused by bird movement between shutter speeds of 1/100 and 1/1000, but there was better IQ for images with shutter speeds between 1/100 & 1/200 (lower ISO and ability to use smaller aperture). If the bird was moving its head eating during exposure the images were blurred at all shutter speeds. A shutter speed faster than 1/1000 would have been necessary to prevent movement blur for images where the birds head was moving.

I had not done any minimum exposure speed tests with my E-M1.2 using dual stabilization until this week. My Eastern Bluebirds are currently feeding their young. The first day of testing was heavily overcast with occasional light rain so I decided to determine the lowest shutter speeds I could use without getting blurred images. I used shutter speeds between 1/8 & 1/400 (the full test was done over several days with over 1600 images) all hand held (I sat in a chair for better photographer stability for all images below 1/20). I found no difference in percent of blurred images produced by bird movement for any of the shutter speeds and few images showed blur caused by bird movement. However, there was a larger percentage of blurred images caused by camera/lens movement at both 1/8 & 1/10 second. In order to test the low shutter speeds, I often needed to decrease the aperture.

The Eastern Bluebird would not be my preferred bird for this test since they do not have the fine feather structure of birds like Catbirds or Kinglets. Their feathers tend to look poorly defined without obvious barbs on the feather vane. However, they were the only birds which would land on one of three points every time they returned to the nest which allowed comparison of many images at different shutter speeds.

While the specific results only apply to the E-M1.2 + MC14 + 300mm f4 with Eastern Bluebirds, the observation that blurred images caused by stationary bird movement may be relatively rare for at least some species is not related to the specific equipment. Photographers should do their own tests with their equipment to determine their minimum appropriate shutter speeds.

Attached are some of the images (with shutter speeds of 1/8 to 1/25) all hand held and uncropped. Raw images were converted to 16 bit TIFF images using the Olympus OV3 software with the Noise filter set to Low. The TIFF images were processed in LR to balance exposure/shadow-highlights/WB/etc. without further noise reduction. The last image is posted for comparison of the low illumination images with an image in brighter light (female in sunlight at 1/400). The bright, directional lighting provides somewhat greater apparent sharpness with the highlight/shadows of the feathers (a little like Photoshop sharpening) and the image required more highlight/shadow compensation.