Guides · Free tool

Burst Picker: find the sharpest bird in a burst

Drop in a burst of bird photos and Burst Picker shows which frame has the sharpest bird, burst by burst, with the keeper cropped and ready to look at. It's for bird photographers who come home with hundreds of near-identical frames and would rather not zoom into every one to choose.

How it decides

Burst Picker looks at each photo on its own. First it finds the birds, the same way BirdFrame does, and takes the main one: the biggest bird in the frame. Then it checks how crisp that bird is, not the background. It looks at the fine detail inside the bird's outline, at the same size in every frame, so a bird that came a little closer doesn't win just for being bigger, and a sharp branch behind a soft bird doesn't count.

Photos taken within two seconds of each other count as one burst, using the capture time your camera writes into every file. The sharpest bird in each burst scores 100, and the other frames are scored against it. Photos where no bird turns up are flagged rather than ranked, so a frame where the bird flew off doesn't sink quietly to the bottom.

It's a fast first pass, not a judge of your art. It can't tell a closed eye from an open one, or a turned head from a good pose. When the top scores are close, open the top two or three frames and choose with your own eye.

Questions

Are my photos uploaded?

No. Everything runs in this browser tab: your photos are opened, searched and measured on your own computer, and the keeper crops are made here too. The page downloads the bird finder once (about 40 MB) and your browser keeps it for next time. No photo leaves your computer.

Does it read RAW files?

Yes: CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, ORF, RAF, RW2 and DNG. Browsers can't develop RAW files, so Burst Picker reads the JPEG preview your camera stores inside each one. On many recent cameras that preview is full size; on others it's smaller, which still shows which frame is sharpest. If a file has no preview it can read, it tells you.

How many photos can I check at once?

Up to 60 per run, which covers a few bursts. Photos are checked one at a time, so it doesn't fill your computer's memory; most take a few seconds each, and the first run also downloads the bird finder. For thousands of photos, BirdFrame for Mac does a whole album or folder in one go.

Why not just use the camera's focus points?

A focus point shows where the camera tried to focus, not whether the bird came out sharp. A bird that moved, a shutter speed that was a little slow, or a twig in front can all leave a frame soft with the focus point right on the bird. Burst Picker checks the result: how crisp the bird itself is in each frame. Not every camera or editor shows focus points, either.

What does the score mean?

It's relative to the sharpest frame in the same burst, which scores 100. A frame at 70 has noticeably less fine detail on the bird; one under 30 is usually clearly soft. Scores don't compare across bursts, because each burst has its own light, distance and bird.

Is there a Windows version?

Burst Picker works in any recent browser on Windows, Mac or Linux. The BirdFrame app is for Mac today; a Windows version is coming soon, and you can join the waitlist from the download button on this page.

Also free: the bird-in-flight shutter speed calculator shows how much the wings blur at your shutter speed, and the reach calculator how many pixels land on the bird.