Long lenses are essential to get good images of wild wildlife (I mention "wild" twice because I am not talking about wild animals in a zoo, that are being fed, etc. I am talking about shooting genuinely wild animals in their natural habitat). Truly wild animals don't often let you close to them (depending on the species). So we have to photograph from a distance. That is where long lenses come in. They have a narrow field of few, allowing us to fill the frame with a distant animal. As much as that narrow field of view helps us, it also harms our photography. It can be difficult to locate our target in the frame when you are only seeing a narrow angle. Moving the lens by a small amount means moving the field of view by many yards, out at distance.

          The best way to learn to find our targets in the viewfinder is to practice. Start by using a zoom lens. Zoom out, locate the target, then zoom in. Try to do this faster and faster until you no longer need to use the zoom function as an aid. This is a skill, not dissimilar from skeet shooting. As with skeet shooting, we also need to learn not only to find the target in the viewfinder but also to pan with it as it moves. After all, we are often shooting moving subjects, not only static subjects.

Our target is just sitting there. We have located it in the viewfinder. We are hoping that it will take off and fly. But if it does, will we be able to track it in the frame? Jerking the camera as the bird takes off, to follow it, is not that easy with a long lens. The distance between the bird and the camera dictate how fast one should pan to keep the bird in the frame. It takes a lot of practice to get to know how fast to pan initially, as the bird takes off. Practicing on bigger, slower birds will help. Practice on cars driving. Practice, practice, practice.

          Okay, here we go:

Start with flying birds that are a ways away and as you get better at panning with a long lens, move on to birds that are closer to you. The closer they are to you to more difficult it gets. Once you get good at it, now start zooming in as you pan. You will notice that I zoomed in during the sequence as the bird gets further and further away from me. For bird in flight photography we have to be able to pan and zoom simultaneously. To increase your odds of keeping the bird in the frame, practice. As Gary Player (top golf player) once famously said, "the more I practice, the luckier I get."