Out of focus fast moving targets Canon R6 Mark II

[Brocstar]

Hello. I’m a novice photographer. But I’ve been shooting with the R6 Mark II for about a month now. I have the RF 100 x 500 lens from Canon. I was shooting some fast moving birds that were feeding today and a lot of my photos were out of focus.  my lens was set from 100 to infinity. I had auto focus on. And I was shooting high-speed. From a far the photos look great but once you zoom in you can tell there is a lot of noise. I kept my ISO at 100 for most of the shooting as it was very bright out. Is shutter 1/500 too slow with an aperture of 5.6f, ISO 100 not great for high speed. I was hoping to get more tact photos. 

Another couple shots I placed were water shots of big groups of birds, dive bombing bait. I was hoping to get some tack shots of the pelicans and seabirds penetrating the water. But they’re pretty dull and not very sharp.One instance of that my settings were 1/5000. F7.1 and iso 1000, water super sharp birds not. 

Another example is 1/640, f7.1 iso… Water sharp birds not. 

I am fully zoomed at 500mm

I want to make sure I am using the best settings for fast birds feeding and catching food as theses opportunities do not come up very often. 

Seemed like on the solo shots with fish hanging from birds mouths, camera was having hard time focusing.  

Any help helps. 

Thanks 

[Brocstar]

Thank you again for the insight and link. I will be watching more of his videos soon. Will update you on my next attempt as I think my auto focus was not set up correct. I also need to increase my shutter a bit as I noticed most my photos are at 1/500.  I can go higher but I will keep you posted. 

Broc 

[TomRamsey]

The feeding frenzy scene is a very hard scene for anyone or camera to pick out and individual bird since there are so many and many are moving fast.  Terns are notoriously fast and unpredictable, even though sometimes you have a chance when they hover before a dive.  Sorry, I don’t have actual experience with the Camera to give specifics, I’ve just recently got my R6 Mark II which is my first Canon camera, and am trying to learn all of the autofocus settings.  I don’t yet have a long lens (200-800 on order) to try out the settings and technique. I’ve shot diving seabirds with Pentax cameras with some success, the R6 Mark II has a much better autofocus system, so I feel learning technique and settings are very important skills.  No matter how good a camera is, it doesn’t take pictures, the user does.

[March411]

Good luck Broc, it will all come together and you'll be getting great images in no time.