Pea Shooter No More!

Call me lazy. Call me unadventurous. But I am a pea-shooter. Or to be more technically precise, a "P-shooter". "P", of course, stands for the Program mode setting of modern DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras. In other words, I am just a glorified "point-and-shoot" picture taker (at this point, it seems inappropriate to refer to myself as a photographer). My rationale for being so is that I wouldn't want to twiddle with the camera settings when the subject of my photography could disappear at any moment. Despite this amateurish stance on taking pictures of birds, I did have some pretty good results of which I am quite satisified. I am quite happy as a P-shooter of birds.


Until recently.


A bird photographer friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

Not surprisingly, this taunting photograph elicited a barrage of comments. It was a comment from another bird photographer friend of mine that got my attention. In effect, he said that what's the use of having an expensive camera and lens if they are on P mode all the time. A cellphone camera could have gotten similar results, he said.


Ouch!


I was hurt! I was shocked! I was embarrassed! It was as if a knife had been plunged into my photographic soul. I know that my friend never intended his comment as a personal attack on me (we haven't done some bird photography together yet, so he couldn't have known my camera settings while in the field). 


After the pain of self-humiliation subsided, I once again began to think rationally. I recalled the time when I first got started in photography many decades ago. Of course, I was using film then. With fixed ISOs. Cameras don't have any automatic settings in those days which means I knew how to set the apertures and shutter speeds in order to obtain decent pictures. But then, I wasn't taking pictures of birds yet. Manual settings were easier to manipulate with subjects such as people (I can always tell them to stop moving) or landscapes (you can change apertures or speeds and the green mountain would still be there in front of you). So I resolved to accept this challenge that presented itself to me. Going back to manual settings - it's just like riding a bike, right?


Saturday, my wife and I decided to go to Antipolo to check on the status of the Slaty-legged Crake family. It was a drizzly morning - a perfect opportunity to once again hone my skills in photography. To make the challenge even more formidable, I opted to bring my aging Canon 40D instead of the better light-responding 5D MkII.


It wasn't very birdy that morning - the Crakes were even a no-show - but I was able to take pictures of some birds, using manual settings, despite the dark and gloomy uncooperative weather.

Pied Bush Chat - manual under natural light, 1/125, f5.6, ISO-1250, partial metering

Spotted dove - manual under natural light, 1/320, f5.6 ISO-400, spot metering

White-throated Kingfisher - manual under natural light, 1/100, f6.3, ISO-400, spot metering

I am pretty happy with the results if I may say so myself. Perhaps now I can say I am no longer a P shooter. I am into M!