bridge77 wrote:

A-Marc wrote:

first, i am no birder at all, there are other people who are completely specialised in this, i am not.

but i have some thoughts.

1.

cameras do focus on contrast. the branches supply way more contrast than the birds head in shadow.

2.

i dont know the canon, but if it doesnt open up the aperture to focus, f13 is quite tough to get focus. mirrorless cameras do have settings to also open up aperture for getting focus, as dslr are doing. find this setting and enable it, to give the camera more light to pull focus.

what would be the best F stop for a DSLR getting focus?

if there is a 'good light', good contrast etc, any should be fine... but, but, but... for a full frame dslr and depending on the lens, usually the middle of the range of f-stops is better.

also i use a FZ200 would it be the same F stop?

no. it's a matter of equivalence.
if in your bridge camera the f-stop is e.g. f/4, then to get the equivalent on a full-frame (35mm) dslr you have to multiply f/4 by the crop factor of the bridge camera. in this case that is 5.6, so roughly f/22. but you would avoid using this aperture in a dslr unless you want/need a bigger DoF at the expense of 'sharpness' (diffraction)....

would F2.8 focus better than F13?

i imagine that for this camera it would be better to stick to wide open or a couple of stops down (f/3.2, f/4). any f-stop in good lighting conditions should be ok but the image quality will suffer more, the more you close down the aperture....

thanks, birds are tough for me and i mostly give up.

try to anticipate where the 'beasts' will land or when it is about to fly away... a fast shutter speed is necessary to stop motion blur, low iso is needed to get the texture of the feathers
sorry i may be not so clear, and of course there are more explanations... but in these honourable fora, other people will complete and correct the information...