Share your wildlife photography!

[lindam]

Have you snapped an incredible photo of wildlife? Post a favorite photo you've taken and share the story behind the image. Be sure to include the Canon gear you used!

About this photo: 

Camera: Canon PowerShot G3 X

Exposure Time: 1/125

ISO: 400

F-stop: 6.3                          

[fatcat]

very nice. well done

[Tape]

I shot this, this morning at a park  (freehand)

Red headed woodpecker

If anyone has suggestions on camera settings I would be grateful.

By the time I was done taking pictures of this bird I took exactly 200 pictures of it 😁

About this photo: 

Camera:  Canon 90D

Lens: Tamron 18-400mm

Exposure Time: 1/40

ISO: 100

F-stop: 6.3

I also shot this one same settings but f/22

Which actually stops the head from blurring and the color is much nicer IMO.

Well not really

[jrhoffman75]

Hello.

A few thoughts:

1. since the bird is moving you want a higher shutter speed to stop motion.

2. you are on a crop sensor camera (which increases the apparent focal length), amplifying any camera shake

3. to avoid motion blur from camera shake you want the minimum shutter speed to be twice the focal lenght (on a crop sensor camera)

You don't say what zoom setting you used, but if you want to be ready for anything I would suggest you set the camera to Av and set the shutter speed to 1/1000.

You don't need a lot of depth of field for this subject, so you don't f/22.  I suggest you set the camera to f/8 and adjust ISO to get proper exposure.

One approach would be to use M mode, set aperture to f/8, shutter speed to 1/1000 and set the ISO to AUTO ISO.

[wq9nsc]

Tape, those are nice images but I would bump up the shutter speed a bit which makes it easy to avoid both subject and camera motion blur.  With such nice lighting, you can increase the shutter speed with a reasonable aperture setting and still have a low ISO.

These were some I captured using 1/1000 shutter for the first and 1/800 for the second two images.  If only I could get them to be more cooperative with pose/lighting.  The little downy woodpecker was curious and briefly perched on my 800mm lens hood, woodpecker taunting photographer behavior and it always wants to find a place where it is heavily backlighted 🙂

Rodger

[Tape]

Thank you wq9nsc & jrhoffman75 for your suggestions. I cannot yet figure out what camera settings I need at the moment of taking my pictures.

I'm still a JEEP in photography, Just Enough Education to Pass.😁

[wq9nsc]

I like John's suggestion of manual mode with auto ISO, that is how I shoot pretty much everything.  I primarily shoot sports but wildlife is similar, you need fast enough shutter speed to freeze subject motion and avoid camera shake and the f stop needs to be sufficient to yield enough depth of field.  Once you have those two parts of the exposure triangle set, auto ISO takes care of the third leg. 

One caveat, if ISO goes too high (too much noise/grain) then you may have to choose a suboptimal shutter speed and/or f stop to keep ISO within reason.  One of the football fields I shoot at has not kept up with light standard maintenance and the light output has dropped significantly this year.  Initially I dropped from 1/800 to a marginal 1/640 shutter speed which is on the edge for sharp HS football action; for the next game I switched from a 70-200 f2.8 for my second body to a 200 f2 prime with a third camera equipped with a 85 f1.8 to compensate for the lousy lighting but 1/640 shutter speed worked OK.

Bottom line, read and learn but you will still have to apply that knowledge to your specific situation and that  is how you gain experience.  The learning curve is steep at first but short. 

I suspect a wider aperture than f8 would work to still keep your desired subject in focus and this would allow a further increase in shutter speed while keeping at or near the camera's native ISO 100.  But that is something you will quickly learn to adapt for different scenes and levels of illumination.

Rodger

[fatcat]

that was good information to stick in my cap and remind myself when switching from landscape to birds.  Its good to hear things repeated, and learn what others do for settings.  Thanks for sharing

[jrhoffman75]

Sad commentary on the state of the hobby/profession that it is believed that a quality image can only be achieved through Photoshop.

[TTMartin]

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@jrhoffman75 wrote:
Sad commentary on the state of the hobby/profession that it is believed that a quality image can only be achieved through Photoshop.

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While they are quality photos, they are severely over sharpened (Lightroom, DPP, etc). 

I didn't say anything, before because to each their own. And the photos aren't posted here for criticism. But, I also don't think we should blow sunshine where it isn't warranted. 

I agree with Tape's assessment the overall effect is the photos look molested. 

[fatcat]

lol.  Guess its the "word" that seems offensive in a way causing some of my need to add some disagreement.  "they look molested"

Personally wasnt looking at the photoshop part....(untrained eye) Now that you mentioned (theres another lesson here) his point was about faster shutter speed to get sharper photos as an example to the previous beginner asking for critique (and help).  If they are oversharpened post,  (a very comon habit with new photograpers) Guilty too.

ESP when you capture a rare sighting and get home to look.... you get what you got and make the best of it.  Sometimes the temptation to oversharpen is simply not realizing you pros out there are gonna notice.  I apprecite the chime in, I learned an important thing to keep in mind that I had not considered.  I cant NOT see it now.  Thanks for sharpening my eye