A few top wildlife photography tips

I thought that it was time to review a few wildlife questions and tips. This is what I talk about:

• What's the best camera for wildlife photography?
• Is DSLR or Mirrorless better?
• What's the best lens?
• Is full frame better than cropped frame?
• How to wildlife photographers get so close to their subject?
• I've a limited budget, what should I buy?
• When is the best time to photograph animals?
• What can I do if I don't have much time to practice?
• What are the best ways to be on the shoot?

I hope you find them useful. AND... please let me know if you have a question that needs to be answered.

It's time for another podcast...

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:17

Hello again. I thought it was time to talk about, wildlife photography, kind of q and a's. I've decided to call this top tips. But it's, I guess a few of the things that tend to come up most regularly when people want to know about wildlife photography. So, I'm going to jump through them as usual. There's no particular order to, what I'm doing, so apologies for that if you're a more ordered person than I am, but there you go. So I'm going to start with the camera because, one of the most often asked questions is what's the best camera? So there are some aspects to that. And, I guess the first answer is the camera that you have. And that isn't intended to be a glib answer, but that's a good place to start. So, what camera are you using? Is it Dslr? Is it mirrorless? I'm not talking smartphone here. You can absolutely use smartphone cameras, for wildlife. There are techniques to do it. In fact, there are some pretty nifty, accessories you can get smartphones that will help you with wildlife. But for the purpose of this podcast, I'm going to assume that you're using a more traditional kind of camera. I mean, maybe a film camera. That's fine. So what is the best camera? Well, let's look at what you have right now. I'm going to assume you have something, what is it giving you? What is, the sensor size or the film size? Is it a full frame or a cropped sensor? how quickly does it react? So what sort of, burst speed can you get on, your shutter? Because things like that. To me, the sensor size is important because there might be times when I can't get in close. So I use my main camera is a canon eos, five deciseconds, and that has 70, five meg full frame sensors. So it's one of the bigger, sensors on the market. What does that mean when I'm doing wildlife? It means that if I have to have the subject relatively small in the frame, because the image size, now I'm always shooting raw and I'm always shooting, the biggest image size I can get. So in doing that, it means that even if I, my subject is quite small in post processing, I can crop right in and still have a good resolution image that will get me the quality I want. If I do have to sort of drop below a certain critical point in terms of the, pixel resolution on the image, then I do have other tools that I can use. So Topaz labs have some AI tools that allow me to expand up ah, that image. And the AI software will kind of fill in the blanks on the pixels. So there is a way around that. But I definitely don't rely on that. And I'm, maybe this is old school but I believe in getting the highest resolution image I can when I first shoot it. So I want to get my subject as big in the frame as I can because then I can do other things, with that subject. However, there might be times when you're shooting for multiple purposes and what I'm thinking of here are stock photographs. So if you are taking your shots and they're on the one hand for your own use and you might want to do something with them, whatever that is, but on the other hand you're thinking using them as a stock photograph. With stock photographs you generally want to allow empty space around your subject because people who then reuse that photograph might want to put a heading or some text actually over the image but not cover the subject. So if your image, if your subject fills the image, fills the frame, there's no room for them to do that. So look, it's a minor thing, which is something to think about, but on the whole, yeah, I want to get my subject as large in the frame as I can. I want to get that as high resolution as possible. So I've got the option to later print that image out on an, a one size piece of paper and stick it on the wall. So what's the best size? One of the questions is it best to go full frame or cropped? Well look, for me it's full frame. However, if you are shining, cropped and I do with my eos seven d mark two, that's that's cropped sensor and I can get some pretty good results out of that as well. So is it a big question? Depends what you're doing. Now the downside that I will tell you on the full frame are ah, my canon eos five. And this won't apply to all cameras and it won't apply definitely so much to a mirrorless camera because they work differently. But my bursts duration is very limited because I'm looking at the maximum file size. It takes a finite amount of time for the software to be written onto the memory cards in the camera. And if I'm going at maximum speed, the camera can only maintain that speed for a second or two. When I'm looking at really big files now, that's my camera. If you're using a more modern camera, and I've had this camera a little while now, you may well find that's not an issue, but it's just something to be aware of. And these are, you know, this is physics, I guess. How quickly can the computer in your camera write a file onto memory and then be ready to acquire another one and write that? So that is only an issue for me if I'm photographing something where there's things happening fast. So one example of that might be, a pot of dolphins where they're swimming across the ocean and they're all, porpoising. So they're jumping out of the water and back in again. But they're out of the water for less than a second. It's very, very fast and you can't possibly focus on a dolphin and then take its photograph at that kind of speed. It just doesn't happen. So you have to use other techniques to nail them. That means you're doing, high speed bursts on your shutter. So that may be an issue for you. It may not. If you're mostly shooting static animals, then that is not an issue whatsoever. So to answer the question, you sort of have to think about what you're photographing as well. And for certain types of photography, you're going to need certain characteristics in the equipment you're using. And obviously for other types of photography, you don't need those, but you may need other characteristics, they come more to the fore. It might be the, sensitivity on the camera, the isos that you can use, what kind of quality you get at certain ISO, settings, all this kind of stuff. So it will vary depending upon the type of photography you're doing. However, to go back to the camera, the first place to look is what you're currently using, what's good about it and what's bad about it. And if there are too many bad things, or if there is a critical characteristic that you don't have on the kit you're using now, well, for me, that's the time to look at another camera body, possibly a camera system, a new camera system. So have a think about it. The next question that is common and that I've spoken about a few times now is, DSLR versus mirrorless. So sorry, I've got a creaky chair. If you're using DSLR now and it does everything for you, I would suggest staying with it. Unless you really are at a point where you've got the money and, you are ready to move on to, a mirrorless camera. And as I've said, there can be advantages like the burst speeds. So generally mirrorless these days is likely to be faster than, DSLR because you're not using a mechanical shutter, and you're definitely not flipping the mirror up every time, so. Or holding the mirror up. So there are definitely advances to mirrorless. The downside to mirrorless is power consumption. So if you are, ah, trekking in the wilderness for days and days, that may well become an issue. If you are, driving around in a car and you can recharge in the car, then probably not. So again, it all comes back down to what is the kind of photography you're doing and where are you doing it and what are the implications of that? The advantages of mirrorless is that the camera and lens combinations tend to be smaller and lighter than the equivalent for DSLR. So if you do have to carry them a long distance, and I'm currently as a record this, preparing to do a 100k walk in the Namib desert with my gear. So my gear is quite heavy. So I can definitely relate to that. But if you're going to be tracking for a long period with this stuff, then it's obviously easier to track with something that's smaller and lighter. you might lose a bit of the ruggedness of some of the, DSLR gear. The gear I have is pretty rugged. So although I try and avoid bashing it against things or dropping it, if that should happen, the, chances are it will all be good. So you do need to think about that. So some of these really lightweight plastic bodies I don't like because they, to me, they're a little bit flimsy for where I tend to go, but, those are things to think about. So there's a whole bunch of pros and cons between dslrs and mirrorless. They change over time. And I have to say that on the whole, mirrorless is catching up with DSLR. And there are probably fewer, advantages now to a DSLR system compared to mirrorless than they were, say, five years ago. there have been big changes and big improvements in some of the more critical areas with mirrorless cameras. So again, it comes back to what's your situation? What's the kind of photography you're doing? Where are you doing it? How do you get there? Those kind of things. How much money do you have? If you've got plenty of money to spend on gear, then fine, knock yourself out. So that is, another aspect of the camera. so, the other part of that is lenses. And again, it depends what you're shooting. So I use, as I regularly mentioned, 100 to 400 mm. Canon, zoom lens is my go to camera for wildlife. And the reason is it allows me to get in very close with that 400 mm. It's also probably about as big as you can comfortably hand hold. Obviously there are longer lenses around. And you know, from one perspective, the ideal lens is a big, long telephoto, fixed focal length. Because they tend to be faster lenses. they have a bigger aperture so you can use a faster shutter speed that generally the performance on a fixed focal length lens is much better. You're likely to get much sharper images than you will with, a zoom lens, even over the same, focal lens. those lenses are definitely high as a general rule. Let's say they are high performance, sharper images, faster, faster shutter speed. However, are they practical for what you're doing? Because I've just been talking about the amount of weight you want to carry. you hardly like to have a backpack full of lenses, big lenses that you can then sit down and change one, lens, do one shot, change another lens, or maybe have a lens on each body. It gets kind of ridiculous to not with the amount of kit you're carrying. So it does come back down to having the range of focal lengths that you are likely to make the best use of in a package that is practical for you to get to where you want to take the photograph. So there's no point having a lot of really good big lenses, but you can't possibly physically get them to where you need to do your photography. So you've got to look then ultimately it's compromise, and it depends on a number of things, but there are a few of them. Money is one, how far you're taking it, you know, what's available. You could look at hiring lenses, but honestly, when I've looked at doing that, you might just as well buy them, to be honest. because the price is, this is my experience, the price is quite high, the minimum rental is quite long and it just becomes unproductive. so that is one aspect of the lenses. However, if you don't have, if you do need another lens, let's say, or you want another body, do you have to go out and buy the, the most expensive stuff for good wildlife photography? Well, again, the answer to that is no. And if you are looking for good value for money definitely look secondhand now. I bought secondhand gear, not, so much now, but certainly, in the first, probably, two decades of my photography, I bought a lot of second, hand gear. I much preferred to buy from camera shops because generally you would get some sort of warranty. it might be three months or six months. It would be limited compared to the new camera gear, but there was a warranty. So as soon as I got it and I would check it out in the store as well. So that's another good tip. Whether you're buying a body or a lens or a combination, if it's digital, take a memory card with you, take some photographs with that gear, have a look at them on the back of the camera and zoom in as much as you can so that you can spot things being out of focus or inconsistencies in, the quality of the image, maybe around the edges that things are compressed or out of focus, whereas in the middle of the image they look okay. So have a good look, but it's always good to get your hands on the gear, have a good look, and then you can try out the functions, try out the autofocus, try different aperture settings, you know, try the modes, make sure they're doing something, they're compensating as you change other settings. So give it a little bit of a workout in the shop, and then you can buy with a fair degree of confidence. And if you've got that warranty as well, as soon as you've got it, just go out there and start taking photographs. Look at them on your laptop, you can put them on a big screen, do that, but do thoroughly check them out. And if you get them from a store, you can generally take it back if there's a problem and then discuss how you're going to go from there. Whether it's something that's repairable, or they pay for it to be repaired, or they refund you whatever it might be. So that is absolutely the way I prefer to do it. You can buy online. some suppliers online are better than others. So if you are going to buy something, obviously it would be unseen if you buy it on the web. Look at the feedback, for different buyers, so it might be through, trustpilot. If you're looking at things like eBay, people give feedback on their experience with that seller. So do have a very good look and really do as much as you can to stack the odds in your favor, because to get good value for money, definitely true on bodies, you're going to get a much better deal on dslRs, you're probably going to get a good deal on older mirrorless cameras if you go back a generation or two. But then I look, generally this, again, my opinion, but I think there's quite a sharp trade off in the performance of those older mirrorless cameras. The battery usage tends to be much higher, you can get fewer shots with them. other things like autofocus may not be as good. You know, there's been a big advance in mirrorless cameras over the last, let's say, ten years. And therefore if you go back a few generations of mirrorless camera, you're likely to lose a lot of performance. And I, as a, as a general rule, I wouldn't recommend it. That's, my suggestion. If you do need to go back to a bit of gear that's several years older, you know, maybe four or five years old or six years old, whatever, I would definitely look at DSLR because the fact is DSLR sort of peaked maybe around ten years ago, maybe a little after or a little before that. But DSLRs as a technology have remained relatively static and most camera manufacturers are not really developing the DSLR cameras anymore and in fact a lot of them have been discontinued. And, you know, the flavour of the month thing that everybody wants is mirrorless. So that's where all the development is going. So on the one hand, that's why mirrorless cameras have changed so much in the last few years in terms of their performance. And on the other hand, it's why dslrs have stayed pretty much as they were. So if you're looking for a good deal, I would definitely suggest looking at a DSLR, an older DSLR body, because, and because the demand isn't really there for them. In most cases, you'll find that you'll get one for a really good deal, even a top end camera, you know, one of the flagship cameras, you can probably get quite a good deal on the. These days with lenses. that's probably not quite the same situation because, the availability of lenses for mirrorless cameras has been one of the issues with them. Although that's, again, is something that's changing. But dedicated lenses for the mirrorless, cameras, so the mirrorless connectors, if you like the correct terms, just immediately flown out of my head just to be useful. but if you want something that, is designed to work with mirrorless, you'll probably find that you, well, you will find that your options are quite limited compared to what's available for DSLR. So with dslrs you've got a wide range of cameras in terms, a wide range of, lenses, I should say in terms of what their original price was, the build quality, their speed, the zoom lenses, you know, zoom ranges that are available. There's a lot of variety and you won't have that with mirrorless. In fact, mirrorless got by in the early days at least, by having, adapters. So you could adapt, say, a canon ef lens mount to the mirrorless mount rf, I think. and that was how they got around it. But I don't like, you know, I want the minimum number of things between my lens and my camera body. Ideally nothing. So, in another podcast I've spoken about teleconverters, I'm not a big fan. and equally the same, when you switch mounts, when you have a mount adapter, what you've got to be aware of then is, is there any loss in light coming through? Do you lose a stop or a half stop? Does, the camera, can the camera still access the full functionality of the lens in terms of auto focus stuff? like that? So you have to be very careful of that. So again, if you are looking to get the best that you can for your money today, 2024, you might be better off looking at a slightly older DSLR system rather than a new mirrorless system, just because you're just in terms of out and out value for money. The thing about lenses as well, something else I've spoken about, I tend to keep my lenses much longer than I keep the bodies. So for me, the investment in the system that is body lens, flash gun, all the other sorts of things you'd get to work, with that camera. The thing that I'm likely to use for the longest is the lens. And that's why I'm quite happy to pay, I'm not happy to pay a lot of money for them, but I'll invest a relatively large amount of money in my lenses, even more so than I might put into the body, simply because I've got lenses that I've been using for 20 years now and they still work great. I get them serviced from time to time and, those can be. So the last service I had in the lens was about€200. I lived in France, we're in euros, but the lens itself was about two and a half thousand euros to replace. So, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. So I've spoken, I feel at some length now about the camera and the lens. So what do you need? I would say, a body with a decent performance that suits the kind of photography you want to do. I would recommend a zoom lens. you might want two. You might want something like a 100 to 400 zoom lens. Then you might, you might want a wide angle zoom. if you're going to get a wide angle zoom, I would recommend I, that you get something that has a macro capability. And macro basically means you can focus on something very close to the lens itself. And if you're getting into, you don't know where I've used it for all sorts of things I haven't thought about. But if you want to shoot insects and things like that, you're much better off with a macro, because it allows you getting really close and get some really stunning, images with a very, very narrow depth field. Okay, so enough about cameras, hopefully that answers any questions you've got about the best camera body to use and the lenses to use now. yeah, I'm just looking at my notes here because I've been going on, on one and I've sort of lost myself slightly. One, of the questions is how do wildlife photographers get so close? So there's a couple of things here. One of them is the lens that I've just been talking about. Why those, having, a telephoto zoom is very useful because it does allow you to get in close and also having a high resolution image. So if you've gone full bore on your zoom, if you're at say 400, zooming in on an animal, you're a 100 400 mm, zoom lens. So you're at 400 mm. If you have something like the canon I'm using with a very high resolution, image full, size sensor. So essentially the same as, same size as the old 35 mm frame. If you have one of those with a lot of resolution, it means that once you've taken the shots, you've got maximum optical zoom that's handled by the lens. You can then do effectively a digital zoom by how you crop in, in post processing. And as I've said, if you've got access to AI software, you can go in even more in terms of digital zoom. So digital zoom is where you're moving pixels apart. And that AI software will fill in the gaps on the pixels. So you have quite a huge zoom capability if you combine those two. So that's one way of producing an image when you've got in really tightly on the animal, you might be right in on an eye, for example. So that's one way of doing it. Now, the other way is, you know, long lens and then to basically optical and digital zoom combination. The other way is to get physically close. And, you probably. And in those situations, you're probably looking at a hide, something like that. where you've got, something set up that's sort of hidden, where you can get in and be in, ah, normally, a kind of wooden area or a canvas covered area you can look out through holes and animals will come up really close and they don't realize you're there. So that's the other way of doing it. That obviously is something that needs a fair bit of preparation, not just in terms of getting the kit together, but knowing where to sight it. So you are close to where the animals will come. Obviously if there's a water hole, something like that. That's a pretty obvious one. But, that does need a bit more preparation than just having a good quality, optical zoom capability and digital zoom capability. So that is more likely to be, the best option for you. Okay. A couple other things here just to finish off. one of them is the best time to photograph. So that is, that really splits in two ways. One is the time of year. So this means doing your research. So the example you, no doubt, if you've listened to me before, will have heard me give is humpback Wales, going past Sydney may to November because they're migratory and that's when they're going by. If you try, if you, if you go to Sydney to photograph Wales between December and I and April, the chances are you're going to be very disappointed because they are, likely to be down in Antarctica or somewhere down south anyway. So do your research. Research is really important. and that really is something. Again, I recommend that you do if you, if you want to have a successful wildlife trip, not only making sure that they're going to be around, but look at other people's, photographs to get ideas, read about the animals. So you've got an idea of the kind of behaviors they're likely to, to see and that will give you ideas for photographs. And then obviously the other one is, what's the best time? But that's in terms of time of day. So if they're primarily active at night and completely dormant during, during the day might be frustrating. But here I'm thinking about owls that I've seen in India. So I've managed to get some really good photographs of them. But that was also down to a really good guide who knew what he was looking for, was able to spot them, you know, way before I would even remotely know they were there. So a good guide is very important, but also known when they're hunting. So, a lot of hunters tend, might be hunting at dawn or dusk, they might be hunting at night. but during the day they're not doing much at all. So if, you know they're not going to be doing very much, then the other thing is to think about, well, what kind of photographs, if you want to get a nice portrait type of shot, again, do it. Don't do it in the middle of the day when the sun's directly overhead, because it's really horrible lighting. It's very harsh light, very hard shadows, difficult. You know, getting a nice exposure level is really tricky, particularly if you're in areas of shadow. You might not have a choice. you might be. And I'm thinking of when I was photographing tigers, we're in forest and we're not there. We were actually there during the middle of the day. We were there getting close, and then we're there in the afternoon. And there were definitely times when it was quite bright sunshine. But because we're in forest, it means you get that sort of stripey effect as, branches and things get in the way. So you've got an animal walking through an, area where the lighting is alternately bright and dark and it's walking through that. So you just need to make sure you've got a reasonable kind of exposure set up. And, I would generally try and get an eye that's litanous, you know, has the light on it. Animals aren't always very cooperative with that, but that's what I like to get, because when you put the photograph together, if you've got one eyelid, we make contact with each other with animals through our eyes. So if you can get that, that is really good. But do a bit of research on the time of year, time of day, what you're likely to see in terms, in terms of behaviors at those times. And then I think about what kind of photograph you would ideally want to get. another thing to, think about is just patience because a lot of time with wildlife, I mean, these animals are doing their thing and, if you're doing your day to day stuff and someone's photographing you, you're just going to ignore them. You're going to do whatever you don't care what photographs they want to take of you, unless you're a bit strange. but, you know, animals are just doing their thing. ideally, they don't care about you because you want to photograph them, doing the natural bits and pieces, but it does mean you have to be very patient. You also have to be very alert and ready to go. So probably the final thing there to be aware of, and that's, one of the questions is people are quite busy and don't have time to go away and practice. Well, this is where, and I've spoken about this, this is where just photographing where you live is really important. Even if you're not in an area where there is wildlife, you're going to have birds around. Pretty much everywhere has birds. So practice photographing birds, or if there are dogs and cats around, you know, play around photographing them in your garden, or, you know, if you see them walking about. just use what you can with the time you have available, because it gets you very focused and approach that with what settings do you need on your camera? What kind of, watch your story. So I, again, you probably heard me talking about the, storyteller as a, you know, be a, storyteller when you take your photographs. So what is the story? Because that drives your composition and how close you want to get and all these kind of things. So grab what time you have to shoot what you can, whatever's around you. And this is really important because when you're there and you're in front of these animals, you really need to know your camera. You don't want to be suddenly thinking about, oh no, how do I change the ISO on this thing? Or how do I know I want to go into aperture priority? How do I do that? Or how do I set the aperture? You know, these are things that should be second nature at the time when you're in front of these animals. So definitely lots, and lots of practice is the final tip for, wildlife photography. So having said all of that, I hope you found that useful. And I'll speak to you again in the next podcast. Please support the podcast. Please have a look at the website. I do have also a 14 day challenge that you can get to on the website. and there's ten tips that you can download as well on the website, so just jump on. I think they're under photography courses. Pretty sure that's right. Or they might be under extras on the website. But yeah, please have a look. There is, there are resources, there that you can use, that will, even if you only pick up one thing from these things, it does not cost you anything. And, it's just something else you now know that you didn't know, you know, half an hour before. All right, so that's it. Enjoy what you're doing. Have a great wildlife shoot, and I'll speak to you again soon. Bye for now. Just before I go, I want to remind you that first, of all, I have an offer running, with, my free download. So if you go onto the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast, and that will take you to a link, to where you can give me your email, I will send you, a PDF, which is ten simple steps to improve your photography today. So, it includes the kind of things that I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white. With some examples, you can see what's going on. And also remember, I offer, online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links are, again below the description of the podcast. And don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and join, me there. So in that membership, you get access, to me. and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. I'll tell you about other things that are going on that I don't share in my Facebook group or on Instagram or anywhere else, really. So it is, just a membership where if you like what I do and you just want to be a part of it, the subscriptions are really low. It's just a cup of coffee a month. So, how much better could I be than that? So please take a look and, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.