On a cold evening in a neighborhood park, I tried photographing birds for the first time. During that short walk I managed to photograph two familiar birds — a crow and a brown-eared bulbul.
I decided to start somewhere simple and close to home. The lens I used was the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75–300mm, a telephoto lens that reaches 300mm.
Sometimes it is described as an entry-level lens for bird photography, but for me it felt like a good place to begin. I wanted to see how far I could go with it before thinking about anything more serious.
The first bird I photographed was a crow sitting on the railing beside a pond.
The bird was quite far away, so the original image showed only a small shape. After cropping the photo, the crow filled about a third of the frame.
The focus is not perfect, but I remember being impressed by how far the lens could reach. Even from that distance, the bird’s posture and the quiet atmosphere of the evening were visible in the picture.
Later I heard the loud call of a brown-eared bulbul and tried to photograph it as well.
By then it was already getting dark. The bird was sitting far away among many branches, so it was not an easy shot.
The camera settings were:
ISO 4000
300mm
F22
1/250 second
At that moment I did not really understand what those numbers meant. The photo simply looked dark and slightly out of focus.
But while adjusting the camera and looking at the screen, I noticed something interesting — when I changed the ISO, the brightness of the image changed. That was the moment I began to understand that ISO controls how sensitive the camera is to light.
A Short Walk with Small Discoveries
Normally I do not pay much attention to the birds I see during a walk.
But once I started carrying a camera, encountering a bird suddenly became exciting. Even familiar birds like crows or bulbuls felt different when I tried to photograph them.
The walk itself was short, but it was full of small discoveries.
I learned a little about ISO, and I also realized that winter bird photography can be quite cold on the hands.
It was only a brief first attempt, but it made me want to go out again soon and try once more.
Birds I encountered that evening
Crow
Brown-eared Bulbul