Hints + Tips
Normal "rule of thumb" that magic 1-2 hours at sun rise or sunset is when the colours and scene depth is at its best, when the sun is low down in the sky, thats when ultra violet light is at its least damaging. For landscape detail get the sun behind you, for good shadow details look at side light and for moody shots try pointing that lens against the sun. For those midday shots, forget the thought I need to get some sky in the viewfinder in quite a few situations you DON,T. Use the canopy of trees to naturally "frame" your shot or zoom in to show some unusual landscape detail.
OK.... so you want to show sky in all your landscapes, then perhaps the rule of thirds becomes more significant, 1st third foreground interest, 2nd third central subject, 3rd third hopefully that "cotton wool" cloud with blue sky.
Taking pictures can be a nightmare in low light if you are not prepared to "up" that ISO setting and get that shutter speed at the right value when you are on the focal length limit of your "best I can afford" telescopic lens. Not everyone have these fast 2.8 fast prime/ zoom lenses, its really technique not equipment that takes importance in this instance. Also you have OS, IS and VR which does not compensate for that "twitchy bird" thats in your viewfinder for what appears to be nanoseconds.
By experience I,ve found the following "sedate times" averages.
Finches and Tits...........1 second
Robins + Thrushes.......5 seconds
Herons + Fowl ............. 10 seconds
Birds of Prey................ 5 second panning
The working basic rule (Full frame) min shutter speed = 1/focal length eg 400mm = 1/400 sec. The comment is I can,t get that, not enought light, I,ll try 1/100 sec, I might get lucky..................You WONT.
Most popular telescopic lens are around the range 4.5/5.6 between 80 to 400mm some with/without image stabilisation. So ISO settings of 200 your success rate is going to be very un productive. Up that ISO to 400 or 800 and now "we are cooking on the gas" for these small "twitchy critters".
Finches and Tits need 1/500 sec because although you are well in focus and you,ve got the right depth of field there,s still body movement going on. for landing and taking off you need 1/1000 sec. For improved success rate its better to predict (by experience) what the bird is going to do or if there is a popular landing site focus on this point and let the bird come onto your camera set up. Lately I have been taking pictures by remote and not even bothered looking through the viewfinder, because when you do and try to respond, the bird has probably already gone.
This is a "surreal image" taken of Scaleber Force near Settle in the Yorkshire Moors. Its processed using high definition software, in this sample by Photomatix. It started life as a single exposed image with plenty of large dark and light areas so the camera exposure calculation had a lot to do. By taking two virtual copies of the original image and exposure compensating these copies to +2 and -2 this is were surreality begins. The three images were combined and the result is a large image file that the monitor and printer cannot convey to the human eye. so the clever bit is to tone map this image to balance all the exposure detail across the whole image. The result is a deeper dimensioned picture with richer colurs and detail, the downside is more picture noise on a larger print scale (A2).
For improved noise quality we can by using in camera technigue, take 3 compensated exposures at normal (0) +2 and -2 levels, the problem is movement and image alignment. So the best way forward is by using a tripod and by taking a picture were movement is cofined to a fixed plane.
eg. A person moving quickly across the frame cannot be aligned to one fixed point, were has a fixed flow of water is possible to simulate.