Foto at top: Holland Reggedal october 2025 Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF VR equivalent 1500mm, Black-headed Gull juvenile, size 37cm distance 45m, hoovering while hunting.

EXPOSURE TIME

EXPOSURE TIME is the third factor of so called “Big Three” who all three together determine the optimal amount of light that the image sensor is exposed to when you press Release and the camera creates a picture using the three actual values of APERTURE and ISO. EXPOSURE TIME is in some way the dominating factor: if EXPOSURE TIME is too long in a certain situations, the resulting picture may be not in-focus and absolutely worthless. One can often correct under- or overexposed pictures significantly but never ever blurred pictures never! They are worthless.

When the value of EXPOSURE TIME is too high, like generally under 1/500 – 1/1000 second in bird photography, you may get these blurred pictures: The movement of the bird(s) is “not frozen”. By the way some birds may make very quick movements also when not flying: shaking feathers, picking an insect or fruit, fighting, mating, etcetera. So be prepared!

In bird photography we usually keep EXPOSURE TIME in between 1/500 and 1/2000 second. If you know beforehand, for example if you are shooting pictures of certain activities of a certain species like Kingfisher, Common Tern, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Kestrel, Buzzard, Sparrow Hawk, Great White Heron, birds that tend to catch insects or bigger prey with sudden movements of body or head or suddenly dive after prey, we may try staying even below 1/2000 second.

Examples of actions and situations in bird photography that required low values of EXPOSURE TIME

In following situations a short EXPOSURE TIME was needed because the action was fast or the situation was such that it could develop into something that like fast action:

Workshop Lightweight bird photography:

• WS1 Reach (bereik)
• WS2 Estimating reach
• WS3 “Big Three”: APERTURE, ISO, EXPOSURE time
• WS4 APERTURE
• WS5 ISO
• WS6 EXPOSURE TIME

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