Our best photography often needs a degree of planning,. Perhaps, choosing the location and maybe scouting out for the best spots that will make a great picture. It also means choosing the right day, so the light is complimentary to the subject, but sometimes we just get lucky. When we do, we need to take advantage of that luck. We were away for a few days in our caravan with friends at Agnes Water, some 450 kilometres north of Brisbane. We were not very lucky with the weather and it rained quite a lot, but as we sat outside waiting for the rain to stop, we noticed there were plenty of wild birds about. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 320mm ISO 400 Shutter speed 125th @ f5.6 Exposure compensation - 0.67 We decided to photograph them, but first we had to lure them a little closer to us. Some were interested in bread, others like the Butcher bird where more attracted by meat, but a quick run to the local shops for some wild bird seed also helped. The equipment we were using was a Canon 5D Mk 2 and a 1Ds MK3. A Canon 100-400mm zoom lens gave us the flexibility to zoom in for really close shots, but to also zoom out a little for the in flight shots. Of course, if you feed the birds bread or meat, it does become a bit tricky to ensure that the shots do not all contain birds with their beaks stuffed with bread. A mixture of choosing the right moment and using the clone tool in Photoshop did the trick. The quality of light that we had was superb, but the quantity of it was dismal. It was overcast all of
the time and raining often as we were shooting the images. You can see from the technical details of the image above that we were using slow shutter speeds and wide apertures. No flash was used in any of the shots and all were shot using Raw mode. In these situations your camera technique and focusing must be spot on, but even then you will have many failures. As you would expect, we had our share of those. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 400mm ISO 100 Shutter speed 200th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation - 0.67) There is a rule you can apply, to ensure a sharp image when hand holding a telephoto lens. It is said that you should endeavour to use a shutter speed, at least equivalent to the focal length of the lens used. So in this shot above we should have used 400th of a second, so why have we managed to capture a sharp shot at 200th of a second. Firstly, the rule is a guide more than anything else, but by using a shutter speed less than the focal length of the lens should alert us to the fact we should consider a tripod if one is available. If not, then at least we are aware that camera shake is possible. In those situations, we can take other precautions, which is what we did for many of our shots. We were able to sit comfortably and brace our own arms on the arms of the chair, almost forming a human tripod. Not quite as steady as the real thing, but it will gain you a stop or two. In addition we were using an image stabilized lens, so that helped a lot too. You will notice in the technical details that we made use of the exposure compensation on our camera. The cameras exposure meter does lie to us often. We kept our eye on the LCD screen to make sure we captured the very best exposure we could and that any work in Photoshop was minimal. Where the shot needed more or less exposure, we used the exposure compensation dial.
After a while, we felt that we needed to look for something a little different, because birds on the ground are often less photogenic than those nicely posed on a branch. The Honey Eater below was suffering a bit in the wet weather and the bedraggled look of this bird adds something extra to the overall appeal of the image. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 400mm ISO 400 Shutter speed 200th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation +1) This bird also stayed long enough for me to look at the LCD screen to see that the shot was a little dark, so I compensated by +1 stop to get the best exposure possible. The exposure will vary depending on the tones in the shot, the lighting and we need to keep checking that LCD and the histogram to make sure we are not disappointed later when we get the pictures onto our computer. What we need to do is avoid having to make radical exposure changes in Photoshop to achieve what we should have captured when we pressed the shutter button. If not, we will always struggle to create great quality images. The best exposure possible is still the holy grail of photographers. After, taking some shots of the birds on the ground, we wanted a change of scenery and found a dead branch in the surrounding trees. As soon as we stuck it in the ground the birds flew to it. I suspect that they feel safer landing in an elevated position so they can check for danger.
They would fly to the branch first, then survey the area, before dropping down to the ground to feed. The branch allowed us to use a diagonal composition in the shot below and the pictures taken with the birds on the branch probably have the edge on those shot on the ground. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 400mm ISO 1000 Shutter speed 500th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation +0.67) The quality of the light remained good, but it got rather dull at times. You will see from the technical details above that we increased the ISO to 1000 and even then, we only managed to achieve a 500th of a second shutter speed. However, this Blue Faced Honey Eater has been captured with acceptable sharpness and the branch the bird landed on all helps with the appeal. The open beak is a nice touch and to capture this sort of pose we need to use the continuous setting on our camera. Birds, don't sit like this for long, so a burst of 3-4 shots is often needed. Then you will often find you capture the bird doing something more interesting than just sitting on the branch. Of course it follows that you will also capture a lot of blurred shots when the bird is moving too fast for a sharp shot. They do move their heads extremely fast sometimes. Not only do we have to consider the movement we make, as in camera shake, but also our subject movement too. In the picture below, the appeal is improved due to the pose of the bird, which looks threatening, but it was actually begging to be fed from a parent. The droplets of water on the back and the wind blowing the feathers all add to the feeling that something is going on here. You will also notice that we hedged our bets a little too. With long lenses, (400mm) depth of field is very shallow and all our images looked sharp on the LCD screen on the back of the camera. They always do, but past experience told us that many would be just too soft to use, if not through camera shake, then through the shallow depth of field. In the shot below, we increased the ISO to 1600 so we could use an f8 aperture to increase that depth of field slightly.
(Canon 100-400mm lens set at 400mm ISO 1600 Shutter speed 800th @ f8.0 - Exposure compensation +1) Of course using high ISO speeds will introduce some noise into your photographs, but there is a way to keep this to a minimum. Your exposure has to be near perfect in these situations because the last thing you want to do is to have to use Photoshop to adjust exposure and contrast. That, will almost certainly make any noise in your photograph worse. Get the exposure as good as you can, now you can spend your Photoshop time subduing what noise was there, rather than fighting to improve the exposure, while battling with the noise caused by excessive manipulation. If getting one bird sharp in these conditions wasn't difficult enough, getting two of them sharp was almost impossible. The depth of field was so shallow that unless they were perfectly placed on the branch, one would always be slightly out of focus. The only way to combat this was to take lots of shots and allow for the fact that your failures will be far greater than your successes. In our case here, we had enough successes to be able to choose one shot to work through in Photoshop. What a bit of luck that they are complimenting one another by looking in different directions and also the fact they had different coloured faces. Well, we all deserve a bit of luck sometimes. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 400mm ISO 400 Shutter speed 500th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation +0.33)
As we photographed the birds it occurred to us that if we could predict where the birds were going to fly to, our branch in the ground, perhaps attempt some in flight shots. With enough static shots in the bag, we changed tactics and retrieved the tripods from the boot of the car. Setting up the cameras, we focused them on the branch that the birds were flying too. Once the camera was on the tripod and focused accurately, we turned off the auto focus and the Image Stabilization. We then set the camera to continuous shooting and attached a cable release. Now all we had to do was to sit back and watch the birdy. You soon see a pattern as first they fly into the big trees 30 meters away and survey the area. Once they were happy all was clear they would fly down to the branch. All we had to do was hit the cable release button and fire off as many rapid shots as the camera could cope with. Looking at the LCD on the back of the camera they all looked spectacular, but we knew that the failure rate would be high. The main cause of that was the lighting conditions, which meant we were shooting largely at wide apertures. The depth of field was so shallow that an inch one way or another was enough for the bird to be out of focus. However, the decision to go for some in flight shots paid off. Many were near misses, but amongst them, some were not. (Canon 100-400mm lens set at 220mm ISO 800 Shutter speed 2000th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation +1) To allow space within the frame for the flared wings of the birds, we zoomed out a little to around 200mm and made sure we got the fastest shutter speed possible. The light had brightened a little, but we still needed to set an ISO of 800. That allowed us to set a shutter speed of 2000th of a second and we needed all of that speed.
(Canon 100-400mm lens set at 220mm ISO 800 Shutter speed 3200th @ f5.6 - Exposure compensation +0.33) Shooting digital images costs us nothing and there are times when it doesn't matter how skilled or knowledgeable you are, you have to rely on the law of averages. Get the technical details right, make sure you eliminate all the obstacles that are in your control and shoot lots of images. Many of your images will go straight in the bin...but not all! In the shot below, we changed the branch to add some variety in our images. We positioned it, so that the birds would sit on the top. This provided us with a close up landscape format image, with the bird almost filling the frame. If you look at the technical details below the image, you will also notice that our focal length is shown at 560mm. We achieved this with our 100-400 mm zoom lens by attaching a 1.4 multiplier. This effectively multiplies the maximum 400mm zoom to 560mm, but when we do this we need to take into account how this will affect camera shake and our depth of field. We shot from our tripod to be sure we didn't get any camera shake.
(Canon 100-400mm lens + Multiplier at 560mm ISO 400 Shutter speed 400th @ f10 - Exposure compensation +0.33) One of the secrets to improving your photography is to fully understand the tools of your trade and the main one of course is your camera. It s a sophisticated tool and we live in a world where we rely constantly on technology, but would it surprise you to know, that your camera will get the exposure wrong time and time again. It is, after all just a tool and without our knowledge to guide it, we will never get the best from it. Many people struggle with Photoshop, simply because they got things wrong at the taking stage and that causes them to start off their manipulations with an image that is already beyond redemption. Blocked up shadows and blown out high-lights are the results of poor exposure control and excessive contrast. It then becomes difficult or even impossible at times for Photoshop to put right these initial mistakes. This is very frustrating for the newer user of Photoshop too, because they think its their Photoshop technique that needs improving, when its actually their camera technique that needs their attention These failures in our exposures are not random things we have to accept as a occupational hazard. They are they not random and we can predict them and sidestep them while we are still in front of our subject. Its far too late to deal with these issues back home on the computer. However, to be able to do this we need to understand our camera better. Once you do, your success rate will improve radically. Camera Craft We have put together a superb disk of tutorials aimed at learning to use a Digital SLR. It contains 42 separate tutorials and runs for around 5 hours in total. Use our disk and take things one step at a
time. Learn about apertures, shutter speeds and your ISO. Then see how these all fit together in the exposure triangle. Learn about contrast and how that causes many of our images going straight into the recycle bin. Above is a screen grab showing a typical viewfinder of a modern Digital SLR. We use graphics like these on the disk to make learning easy to understand. We can look through the viewfinder together and see the effect of the changes we make. Many of the techniques we used to capture these images are to be found on this disk. Check out a PDF document that covers the content of Camera Craft in much more detail HERE. Download our introduction to this disk and see if what we say makes sense to you. Above all else, you will need patience to capture wildlife images and that part is all down to you. All words and images are copyright to:www.beckhamdigital.com.au www.beckhamdigital.co.uk