Hi all. I have a fun 10 Question Bird Photography Quiz for you. It’s just for fun, but who knows… you may learn a tip or two as well. Enjoy!
Click Here to Take the Quiz and feel free to discuss below. Remember… this is for fun! So if you’re gonna nitpick my questions/answers I’ll probably make fun of you, or remind you I wrote “generally” about 50 times during this quiz. Next time, you can make your own quiz 😉
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
Matt, your wife is a marketing genius. You should prelude each of your courses with a test. It serves several purposes. First, it allows an empirical assessment of one’s knowledge of the subject matter covered in the course, more importantly, areas that require a greater degree of understanding. Secondly, it will serve to reinforce techniques and concepts encountered while taking the course. Lastly, it’s worthwhile to repeat the test at the completion of the course. I sure hope your wife is receiving a major consulting fee.
is this the divi theme? looks so much like it and that comments section makes really think so
I don’t like bird photography. Just saying. 🙂
I don’t like sushi… just saying 🙂
Don’t agree on expose to R but each to their own. For me slight underexposure gives faster shutter speeds or dof and feather detail in white areas is VITAL
I agree, exposing to the R with many birds, especially with white feathers, will make capturing feather detail difficult, since you
can only bring highlights back about one stop in post processing.
Hi. There is a tremendous amount more information and detail in highlights than there is shadows. This isn’t an opinion, it’s the way imaging works. The problem with underexposing (yes, it allows faster shutter speeds with lower iso) is that you still need to bring back detail in those shadows. When you do that you introduce the same amount of noise that you would have normally introduced to the photo had you photographed a good exposure, the same shutter speed you would have used, with of course a higher iso. Give it a try and compare (I have which is why I write about it). The photos are almost identical, but you’ll find better feather detail with the ETTR photo than you will with the underexposed version, and it also responds to noise reduction software much better since they’re tuned for those types of images.
Thanks Matt. It was fun.
Your always so generous, kind, and informative.
I enjoyed it and I learnt some tips which I would never have thought of.
Thanks
You’re very welcome Vicky! Glad you liked it!
Fun quiz! Thanks for the diversion. I only got 50% which probably means I should be taking the course. I did better on the bird questions than the camera questions, which probably lowers my score even further :).
Ha! I wouldn’t worry too much about it 🙂
Got some right, got some wrong. Some of the right I guessed, some of the wrong I should have read the question better. 100% enjoyment!
Well, 9 out of 10 – I can’t believe that for me as I am not a birder and live in the U.K. where our birds are rather different to those in the US. But maybe I know more about my camera than I gave myself credit for.
Great to participate and learn that birds fly into the wind – I didn’t know that, in my garden they just fly away North, East and West – never South towards my big window
Flying in to the wind is “generally” (there’s that word for the 100th time ) 🙂 noticed more among larger birds in open areas. For birds in my backyard or gardens I don’t typically see too much of a pattern unless it’s a REALLY windy day.
Fletch
Fun quiz.. I got 90% but then I guessed a couple correctly! I know nothing about hummingbirds as we don’t have them where I live. The Osprey was a guess, I knew it was a sea bird at least. The wind from the west I got.. you mentioned this a couple of times in yourr ‘test’ videos! Wind in your da e, butt in your face! I still believe that taking multiple shots increases your chance of getting 1 shot in focus in action photography though. I’ve learnt a lot just from the ‘test’ videos, thanm you. I loved your 3 ideas for practising focussing on birds… I’m going to try them all out!
Well, I would have had a D in school for this quiz, but it was fun and I missed some where I should have known the answer. Cracks me up every time you qualify your statements so that you don’t have 100 people “proving you wrong” and flooding you with emails….keep it up, lol!
(sigh)… you’d be amazed if you saw the messages I got from people telling me I’m wrong or WAY overthinking this 🙂
Like Larry, I didn’t take time to fully read the wind direction question. Thankfully, it was only for fun, and was a fun quiz. Scored 90%, but I won’t spoil the fun by crying.
Happy with my 90% score but never heard of Fletch. I’ll have to check it out
Could be one of the greatest movies of the 80’s.
yep
The books are even better. If you haven’t come across them, check it out.
Thanks Matt, enjoyed the quiz, 70% isn’t bad, should have read a question better. Stopped photographing people years ago, found wildlife a better challenge and much more rewarding. Enjoy all of your articles!
80%
Fetzer valve is an electronic circuit used in musical/audio amps/electronics.
Great with the 80% but I’m taking 10% back since you did not get the correct reference to fetzer valve 😉
Fetzer valve was the bluff that Fletch used (in Fletch) when he was pretending to be an aircraft mechanic. Fender guitars call one of their intentional distortion guitar controls the Fetzer Valve. I suspect they got that from Fletch, perhaps not first hand.
Fun quiz, I scored 100 but had to think about the one for shooting birds in the morning if the wind is out of the west. You only said morning, not early morning which would mean sunrise as you explained in the explanation. I got it right but it was a bit of a confusing scenario.
A fetzer valve was used for distortion pedals using a tube amp
Wind direction is completely contextual and depends on your goals, and where you have to position for the shoot. Millions of shots taken shooting with the sun to your back. Easy, but since everyone does it including me, it makes it difficult to capture an interesting or new look. Some of the most creative shots come from shooting into the light.
Under exposing is also more nuanced. Locking in a lower iso that underexposes can help prevent blowing out the sky highlights. The Nikon cameras I have are almost zero iso invariant. Keeping the iso low and underexposing by 2 to 3 stops has helped generate many more keepers.
I don’t know how you are metering that 2-3 stops under exposed gets you the correct exposure.
Fun! Thanks! 🙂
Opps – 60% correct indicates I have a lot to learn. Thanks Matt this was fun. Obviously I need to take advantage of your course! Will you be conducting trips other than just birds?
Hi Pam. I’m currently not planning future workshops and don’t have plans to change that for the foreseeable future. Thanks!
It was fun !! I failed as others are saying!! Thanks Matt
The Start Quiz button would not work for me. (Your links seldom work for me in the Chrome browser, no matter which of my computers I am using.)
Ha ha ha… I only got 50%. I thought you threw some trick questions in there but I should’ve gone with my gut answers. I deliberately took this quiz before finishing your new course to see if I could ace it. Nice job stumping me. Now back to the course. So far it’s amazing!!
Hi William. Not sure about that. We tested on all browsers on both Mac and PC. It’s got a few thousand participants so far and nobody has mentioned an issue. I’d make sure you don’t have a pop up blocker or something along those lines. Sometimes anti-virus software causes issues too. Thanks!
Only use Chrome, and no problems, ever. Got to be something else, like a pop-up blocker, which doesn’t want to recognize Matt’s stuff or let it through its filter.
No problem with Chrome on my Windows or Mac. Possibly a problem with your settings…
After getting only 50% on the quiz, I’m extra excited to take the course and learn!
Great quiz, Matt. When I read the Fetzer valve question, I knew we were similar ages. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched that movie when I was in college and afterward! Make sure you get some 3 in 1 oil and ball bearings, too! ? I won’t spoil the answer here for those that still want to guess. Title starts with F and star actor’s initials are CC. Best of luck with the course!
Guess I need to take the course…
Aaaargh! Didn’t read the wind direction question carefully enough. Guess I’ll live with 90%
No problem. I’ll give it to you! 😉
80% so not too bad – didn’t get wind direction or exposure compensation questions right.
70%. I’m disappointed in myself.
The movie was Fletch (1985 starring Chevy Chase)
May I have my extra points?
?
Yep… I’ll bump you up to a B 🙂
Matt, thanks for all you do and the knowledge you share. But you might want to double check 2 of your quiz answers.
Perhaps a better answer for ‘crazy’ question 10 is that it depends on your camera and its settings. For many high end bodies, you can set a max ISO and a minimum shutter speed. When the camera doesn’t have enough light, it will compromise one or the other. My Nikon drops the shutter speed.
The ‘answer’ to question 1 is perhaps also somewhat misleading. Fire off a burst of handheld frames on a subject and one will inevitably be sharper than the others. The higher the frame rate, the sharper the sharpest frame will likely be.
That was my view on Q1 as well — but on reflection, ‘sharper images through burst mode’ is more likely to be the case when your shutter speed is slow. It’s unlikely you’d be using a slow shutter speed when photographing birds, so I can see why Matt chose the answer he did. That said, when I shoot burst mode on my Olympus, I don’t really get that many variations in pose, since it’s shooting 60 fps! Poses don’t vary much in a second.
Pose variation depends on what you are shooting and how fast it is moving. I use Olympus ProCapture feature at 60fps for birds taking off. Even 60 fps is not a guarantee to catch the best pose since wing movements can be very fast with smaller birds. I like that Olympus provides us several framerate options between 10-60 fps and ability to shoot RAW at these speeds.
Fun quiz BTW.
It was fun – but I failed miserably –
Hi Matt-My computer would not accept my answer on the wind question, so I could not find out the right answer. My guess was yes. When I photograph birds I always want to know the wind direction because birds will land going into the wind, just like planes and that knowledge gives me an edge.