How to photograph owls at night in flight?
Use motion and sound to attract the bird.
My go to settings: S 1/160, ISO 3200, f8, speed light with 1/32 power.
Fix the camera on tripod or car rig.
Prefocus your camera to the shooting spot.
when they hover, get ready and put your finger on the shutter.
Be careful of the shutter sound, owls hates it, Mirrorless camera will simply do better.
Mirrorless advantages are silent shutter and higher frame rate per second.
I captured these photos using pre-focus; I had already focused on the branch I'm attracting the owls to. When they appeared, I simply trigger the shutter and hope they would pass within the proper depth of field.
To ensure success, it's crucial to check the depth of field for the selected aperture on the lens-camera combination. For instance, when using a full-frame body and a 250mm lens at f/8, the in-focus depth of field is approximately 30cm.
Examples of missed shots
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“Owl is too close too us, knowing that our focus reference is the branch with tolerance of 30cm”
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“Passing by in a perfect spot but behind our focus point, but with such shots we know that our attraction method works”
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“Focus tolerance is 30cm from the branch, 15cm infront of it and 15cm behind, these out of focus shots are impossible to fix"
