Why are your bird in flight pictures not sharp? I try to show it is unlikely to be the settings.

When I used to teach BIF photography, nine times out of ten people were using too slow a shutterspeed as they were trying to shoot with low ISO.

Hey Mike, it looks like you had excellent light for that session, so yes your settings will work. I agree with all your points except for one and that's when conditions are not so favorable. And I also shoot with the om1 & 150-400 pro lens. But have found that shooting in all or the large focus box especially in low light or hazy skies will produce soft images for me. My best sharpest images of, for example photographing ospreys diving and capturing fish with their talons in flight is using the middle box and making sure that the focus limiter switch on the lens set correctly and in my case at 6m to infinity. Focus sensitivity set to plus 1 and also set to C-Af. I don't worry about Iso, so it is set to auto 6400 with a minimum shutter spd. of 2000 for large birds and for small birds I shoot in pro capture, ss minimum 4000 and again auto iso 6400. I like to shoot with back button focus. I find I have more control of activating or deactivating the focusing box and re-focusing on the subject that way. I still remember one session shooting ospreys in early morning low light I had my triangle set correctly as I described above but still getting a lot of soft images and I look at my lens, and I forgot to switch back my range limiter to 6m-infinity, because earlier in the morning I was shooting stills of sparrows in heavy cover using 1.3m-infinity, since they were sometimes perched very close to me. In other words, I find that this lens has a very short depth of field at 300-500mm so proper settings in camera and on the lens is so critical. The less time the camera and nor lens spends hunting focus, the sharper your image. (by the way, not trashing the lens, this is one heck of a very versatile lens when used properly) Also, stab is set to on, in camera and on the lens for maximum stabilization. No herky, jerky movements when panning the camera from side to side when following birds in flight, good steady motion for sharp images. If you are shooting birds in flight i.e. a puffin and the wind is blowing like heck then you have to take off your lens hood and just be very careful shooting, sacrifice a couple of shots with sun flares because with the lens hood on, the wind will get inside that lens hood and create that herky jerky movement for soft images. And for perched birds in heavy cover, I shoot S-AF using sometimes the smallest focus box pointed right on their eye, I setup my om1 to back button focus get focus on the eye, recompose and take the picture. And Mike you're absolutely correct that the result of a bad picture was because of my user error, mostly because I didn't know how to use my om1 and my 150-400 correctly. It took me almost one-year of shooting with this combo to figure what settings worked for me. Hopefully this will work for someone out there.

Very good video. I am a new OM-1 Mrkii owner and I really appreciate your to-the-point explanations.

Another clear, concise post from Mr Lane. Thankyouthankyouthankyou Mike!

That was excellent, thank you. Just changed from m1 mk2 to OM-1 mk1 and I'm still playing with options. Really helpful to have such a straightforward summary

Brilliant video Mike 👍 I do own the OM-1 with the 300mm f.4 and it works great for me. No issues whatsoever with the auto focus. It does show that 99% of the time, it is a user error and not the gear! Keep uploading your very helpful videos. 👏

Great video Mike, I will be going into the menu and seeing if I've got it right and look forward to seeing the next videos. Thanks for sharing.

What a good tutorial. Nicely paced and easy to follow. Pity I don’t have an OMD camera!

Another interesting video.Looking forward to the next couple.

Thanks Mike, useful stuff.

great video thank you

Another top video Mike. OM Systems should be paying you for these.

Great information which can be translated to whatever is your chosen brand of Camera. Keep well 👍🇬🇧

Very helpful, thanks! EDIT: and lovely photos !

Normally I’m terrified to reset the camera! I’ve spent so much time getting the “right” settings and storing them that I wouldn’t want to have to go through all that again. But you’ve convinced me that it’s not that difficult and maybe I should try it. Having said that, I don’t typically have trouble with my 300mm f/4 in acquiring focus, but for sure, I have had times when I did have settings that were interfering with each other. Thanks for this video, and I’ll be watching for more in the series.

Mike, thanks for a straight forward group of settings that work most of the time. As you say it is too easy to chase settings and get lost. With the sun behind you and the bird filling > 10% of frames the good results should be achievable. At 1/2500 and <500mm image stabilisation has little effect. With static subjects IS works so well we can get lulled into using very slow shutter speeds. Once subject moves and SH2 engaged IS becomes much less effective. The other thing I am guilty of is trying to take picture at far too great a distance for record and identification purposes. Adding 1.4 converter to 150-400 works well but quality of image drops off as subject is too small and atmospheric conditions affect the image. Look forward to see what other settings you change and why.

A lot of people don't use a tripod. Although the image stabilization is very good these days I feel a lot of people rely on this ! A Gimbal or Fluid head is still required for best performance in this situation ! Which I am sure you mentioned in your presentation Mike. But well worth reiterating ! All the best Mike hopefully you saved me a few comments on the Sony A1, but most people tend to have mastered this one, when you spend £6500 on just the Camera body alone ! 🤔

My dream camera is the Om1 so this is helpful for me in the future and helpful for making me want one even more. Great shots of the red kites mike

Very interesting and informative video. I find too slow a shutter speed is most often the culprit responsible for less than sharp photos.

Honestly, I think it takes getting used to the lens. For example, using my PL 200 2.8 prime and 1.4x was a totally different experience from using my old PL 100-400 and my Oly 40-150 2.8. Holding it, shutter speeds best apertures for the lens, etc. It took like a week, but I improved quite a bit with the prime.