Wildlife Photography

[casportpony]

I stopped by the 5 Rivers Delta center which has a small wildlife exhibit yesterday afternoon and grabbed a few pics...

Those are awesome!

 

[casportpony]

"I kill you"

cobra chicken preening.

You're too funny! Why do you can them cobra chickens?

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Thanks. That was my first time shooting indoors and it was not easy. I'm going to go back in a week or two and try again, being a little more prepared...

Could you give a brief explanation why and how you overcame the difficulties?

 

[mdees88]

Could you give a brief explanation why and how you overcame the difficulties?

So I have never taken wildlife pics inside a building before. I don't think I've ever taken a photograph inside a building actually, since I almost exclusively shoot wildlife. There's very little light inside compared to shooting outside. Obviously there's enough to see but not a lot for taking pics and I didn't really want to use a flash. So I planned on shooting with a wide open aperture to gather the maximum amount of light. I used a 100mm F2.8 lens and shot it at f2.8 aperture.

The problem with shooting wide open is the very shallow depth of field you get. Look at the kestrel image. There is only a 1/4" wide strip of his head that is in focus. Everything else is out of focus. Same with the snake. Most of his eye is in focus but his nose/mouth is out of focus.

Another issue was the AF didn't work good at all shooting through glass windows. I compensated by taking hundreds of pics but between the AF issue and the shallow DOF, probably 95% of my shots were useless. So next time I'm going to turn eye detect off and just try a single point, spot AF. If that doesn't work I will just shoot manual focus through the glass. Most importantly, I will stand a little further away, then crop in afterwards. By being further from the subject my DOF will increase.

I used my full frame camera because I knew I would likely be shooting at high ISO's. Problem is a full frame camera means I have to get closer to the subject compared to using a crop sensor camera. Getting closer makes the DOF even shallower. So I'll probably use my APS-C sensor camera next time and just deal with any extra noise in lightroom.

 

[mdees88]

Here's a few from this morning....

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

So I have never taken wildlife pics inside a building before. I don't think I've ever taken a photograph inside a building actually, since I almost exclusively shoot wildlife. There's very little light inside compared to shooting outside. Obviously there's enough to see but not a lot for taking pics and I didn't really want to use a flash. So I planned on shooting with a wide open aperture to gather the maximum amount of light. I used a 100mm F2.8 lens and shot it at f2.8 aperture.

Crazy! Yeah I agree with not using flash but f2.8 is super shallow!

The problem with shooting wide open is the very shallow depth of field you get. Look at the kestrel image. There is only a 1/4" wide strip of his head that is in focus. Everything else is out of focus. Same with the snake. Most of his eye is in focus but his nose/mouth is out of focus.

True but that owl is beautiful and it doesn't really detract from the images much at all.

Another issue was the AF didn't work good at all shooting through glass windows. I compensated by taking hundreds of pics but between the AF issue and the shallow DOF, probably 95% of my shots were useless. So next time I'm going to turn eye detect off and just try a single point, spot AF. If that doesn't work I will just shoot manual focus through the glass. Most importantly, I will stand a little further away, then crop in afterwards. By being further from the subject my DOF will increase.

I find with glass taking a few extra steps back does seem to help and removes many/all reflections too. 95% of my shots outside are useless so I wouldn't worry about that haha. Eye detect probably going to struggle through glass but I'd think spot will work well, possibly even a small area would be okay. Manuals always great. Great point about DOF

I used my full frame camera because I knew I would likely be shooting at high ISO's. Problem is a full frame camera means I have to get closer to the subject compared to using a crop sensor camera. Getting closer makes the DOF even shallower. So I'll probably use my APS-C sensor camera next time and just deal with any extra noise in lightroom.

Curious with a 200mm f4 and manually increasing the exposure to +2.0 or more if it would pull off cleaner images? If it did then would work great on the FF. Otherwise get as close as possible to glass or good distance away that you "can't see" the glass.

Thank you for your thorough response, found that really useful, thank you.

 

[HopKat]

So I have never taken wildlife pics inside a building before. I don't think I've ever taken a photograph inside a building actually, since I almost exclusively shoot wildlife. There's very little light inside compared to shooting outside. Obviously there's enough to see but not a lot for taking pics and I didn't really want to use a flash. So I planned on shooting with a wide open aperture to gather the maximum amount of light. I used a 100mm F2.8 lens and shot it at f2.8 aperture.

The problem with shooting wide open is the very shallow depth of field you get. Look at the kestrel image. There is only a 1/4" wide strip of his head that is in focus. Everything else is out of focus. Same with the snake. Most of his eye is in focus but his nose/mouth is out of focus.

Another issue was the AF didn't work good at all shooting through glass windows. I compensated by taking hundreds of pics but between the AF issue and the shallow DOF, probably 95% of my shots were useless. So next time I'm going to turn eye detect off and just try a single point, spot AF. If that doesn't work I will just shoot manual focus through the glass. Most importantly, I will stand a little further away, then crop in afterwards. By being further from the subject my DOF will increase.

I used my full frame camera because I knew I would likely be shooting at high ISO's. Problem is a full frame camera means I have to get closer to the subject compared to using a crop sensor camera. Getting closer makes the DOF even shallower. So I'll probably use my APS-C sensor camera next time and just deal with any extra noise in lightroom.

I just saw a video where a dog agility photographer takes fast action shots in very poor light conditions. She ramps her ISO as high as 80,000 to allow a fast enough shutter speed. My camera only allows up to 50,000 but I had it stopped down to 12000 for fear of noise. Lightrooms new update has AI noise reduction thats getting great reviews. Several weeks ago I tried to photograph dog agility but wasn't successful. Ill try again with a higher ISO. Maybe you could experiment with that in your indoor setting

 

[mdees88]

I just saw a video where a dog agility photographer takes fast action shots in very poor light conditions. She ramps her ISO as high as 80,000 to allow a fast enough shutter speed. My camera only allows up to 50,000 but I had it stopped down to 12000 for fear of noise. Lightrooms new update has AI noise reduction thats getting great reviews. Several weeks ago I tried to photograph dog agility but wasn't successful. Ill try again with a higher ISO. Maybe you could experiment with that in your indoor setting

That's definitely worth a try. I've always been in the camp of keeping my ISO as low as possible, though it's not as big of an issue with these newer cameras. You're right though, lightroom and topaz denoise do a very good job at managing it. I prefer to keep mine in the bottom end of the 400-3200 range. I definitely understand bumping it up a lot more if you need the faster shutter speeds. I've never really tried the 10-20,000 range but I might stop down to f5.6 next time and see how they turn out at higher ISO. Most of my pics the other day were around ISO 3200-6400 and 1/60-1/160th shutter speed at f2.8.

 

[mdees88]

I find with glass taking a few extra steps back does seem to help and removes many/all reflections too. 95% of my shots outside are useless so I wouldn't worry about that haha. Eye detect probably going to struggle through glass but I'd think spot will work well, possibly even a small area would be okay. Manuals always great. Great point about DOF

One issue was using a prime lens and not being able to zoom out. I shot standing away from the glass first but there were so many lights in the room at different angels I kept getting reflections on the glass. Once I put the lens up against the glass the reflections went away but I was so close to the animals that I had a very shallow DOF. I'm going to bring my 50mm F1.8 next time and try it at f2.8 (and F4 if there's enough light). That would give me double or 4x the DOF I had with the 100mm at 2.8....

 

[HopKat]

I get frustrated feeling like I always have the wrong lens on.
Thats good that you can go home. Look at your images and think about it and go try again.