EQUIPMENT

The vast majority of photos exhibited on this site were taken using a Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera—a 10-megapixel professional DSLR.  I have two of these cameras, and always go into the field with both of them, one attached to a high-power, tripod-mounted lens, and the other attached to a lower-power flight lens which I sling over my shoulder and use hand-held (i.e., without any tripod).

The photo below shows my usual setup in action.  The large lens is a 600mm f/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter attached, resulting in an effective focal length of 840mm.  This lens is very heavy and is almost always mounted on a tripod, though in extreme circumstances I will detach it from the tripod and use it hand-held.

The black trapezoid-shaped box you see mounted above the lens in the above photo is a homemade fresnel flash extender, which both magnifies the light from my flash (by concentrating it into a narrower cone) and increases the effective reach of the flash.  The above photo also shows my flight rig slung over my shoulder.  This rig incorporates a second EOS 1D Mark III camera and a 400mm f/4 lens.  The Canon 400mm f/4 DO lens is, in my opinion, nearly the perfect lens for photographing birds in flight, because it is lightweight, relatively compact, bright (f/4), and extremely sharp (fully as sharp as my Canon EF 600mm f/4L lens).  This remarkable 400mm lens is shown below attached to an older camera:

Both of my main lenses feature image stabilization.  This feature can be very useful in some circumstances (even when using a tripod), though in bright light or for flight shots it's often unnecessary.  Although the IS (image stabilization) has a panning mode that should in theory be useful for flight shots, I simply turn IS off whenever the bird I'm tracking is in constant motion.  When light is plentiful and I can use high shutter speeds, IS really isn't needed at all, and in fact it can slow down the autofocus acquisition speed for restless birds like warblers.

Teleconverters are a very important part of my lens lineup.  I use a 1.4x teleconverter more than 50% of the time that I'm in the field, both with my big 600mm lens and my smaller 400mm flight lens.  The 2x teleconverter I only use when extreme focal lengths are required.  Canon's teleconverters are of extremely high quality, though they're expensive and brand-new units are sometimes defective, so they need to be rigorously tested in the field.

I've also made extensive use of extension tubes (see below) in the past, though more recently I've rarely used them at all.  Extension tubes reduce the minimum focus distance of your lens.  My bigger lens can't focus on any bird that comes closer than 18 feet, while my smaller lens can't focus closer than about 11 feet.  Using an extension tube can sometimes reduce the minimum focus distance dramatically, and this can be useful for small birds that allow a close approach.  The disadvantage is that with the extension tube attached, you can't focus at infinity (i.e., at longer distances).  Also, sometimes an extension tube will cause the camera to focus incorrectly.

In addition to the camera a lens, an extremely important piece of equipment for photographing birds is the flash unit.  The advantages of flash are numerous: it allows a faster shutter speed, which can better freeze motion and thereby produce sharper images; it results in richer, more natural colors; it lightens up shadow regions of the bird, thereby reducing noise and increasing apparent detail in poorly-lit areas; finally, it creates an impression of extremely fine detail, via the phenomenon of micro-contrast, whereby microscopic features of bird feathers that are parallel to the imaging plane are rendered in exaggerated contrast to adjacent surfaces.

Unfortunately, flash photography requires a lot of battery power.  I keep a bag of several dozen AA batteries with me at all times in the field.  When on long trips away from home, re-charging all these batteries each night in my hotel room can be a challenge, given the limited number of power outlets available in many downscale hotels.  I solve this problem by using the PowerSentry Squid, or what I like to call the Squidmonster: