Photography Tips and Hints:
Reading the light:
Photographing wildlife is a challenging aspect of photography. The photographer is up against numerous nuances that include the subjects behaviour and the available light. Light is probably the single greatest consideration. Studying and analysing the light around you is a good start to getting a good image. This exercise can be done anywhere and at any time, wherever you are in the world. Natural light is constantly moving as is often the case with your subject. So second to the study of light is knowing and understanding your subject. Knowing your subjects behaviour patterns allows you to anticipate movement and behaviour giving you a much greater chance of getting a good shot. When it comes to being on safari, your guide is critical as often they are the ones reading the light and the animals behaviour.
Choosing equipment:
The body:
Choosing photographic equipment today brings its own challenges. There is simply so much to choice. Of course it can be narrowed down to the larger well known brands. I think it is important to consider just how much use you would like to get out of your equipment. Photography is a wonderful hobby that can be used to make extra money with. If you are keen then by all means consider equipment that will not out date to rapidly and where the technology will allow for upgrading your camera body and where the lenses will remain compatible.
The body: The first consideration is the number of mega pixels. Currently, one can buy an excellent body that offers over 10 million pixels. This is a good entry level number of pixels for enlarging and helps when cropping after the image has been taken. The other important factor is the material used for the camera casing. If you envisage using the camera frequently in tough conditions for example on safari, you may want to look at sturdier bodies. The number of focus points, the number of frames per second and the ability to shoot in RAW is equally important. A RAW file can be described as a negative and can never be minipulated - one can open them and save them as a TIFF or a JPEG. On these new files, one can make adjustments like cropping and sharpening. Using the RAW setting on the camera will mean shooting in the largest file available to your camera body.
The lens:
In the first paragraph, I spoke of the importance of light. The lens is critical for sharp, crisp images and when choosing a lens, please consider the glass. The professional series lenses from the various companies allow for much greater clarity and this by comparison to normal lenses can be the difference between a mediocre shot and a great shot. Wildlife photography starts at first light and ends just after the sun goes down (provided you don't have a flash.) It is therefore important to consider the aperture of the lens that you are a buying. A 2.8 lens is ideal as it will allow for the most amount of light coming into the lens especially at sunrise and sunset. When the sun is up, the same lens will allow for faster shutter speeds. Having said that, I use a 4 - 5.6, 100 to 400mm L series lens from Canon and it has been a valuable and versatile lens for what I need. Strong magnification is
important and I believe that a minimum of 400mm is required. Many lens and bodies come with image stabilisers and this helps hugely when it comes to getting a fast result when there is little time. To sum up - the faster the lens, the more light it lets in, the better your chances are of freezing the action and diminishing camera shake.
Stabilising equipment:
Keeping your equipment still is crucial. This can be achieved by using a tripod, monopod or beanbag. Tripods are not always useful as the majority of images are taken from a game viewing vehicle. They can be clumsy in the small amount of space available to you on the car and also add to your luggage weight when travelling abroad. Monopods not only take up little space but are practical on the vehicle. Beanbags are excellent but one has to make sure that there will be somewhere to set it up. Not all cars have a convenient bar in front of you to rest on. The monopod with an image stabilizing lens or body will do the trick.
Memory capacity:
Most people no longer travel with their laptops as there are so many alternatives available for storing your images. The first and most obvious is your memory cards. Today you can purchase cards with high memory capabilities. However, I like to use a photo reader as it allows me to edit on safari if need be. These readers can now go to 120 GB and more, which is plenty for a 10 day safari. I like the Epson P5000 as it portrays true colour and allows me to view the image at 100%. This will tell you if you have achieved sharp focus or if camera shake has cost you the shot. The viewer acts like an external hard drive and so it is easy to use as part of your back system. I have noticed through the years that people easily take around 2000 to 3000 images on a safari. And so you can work out that you will need at least 30GB for a 8.2 mega pixel camera shooting in RAW. The rule is the more the better because we never know just how much we will do and it is better to be prepared. One word of caution - I met a traveller that had just bought a 8GB memory card that could not be read by his older model digital camera. Please check with the assistant who sells you the card or with the manufacturer of your camera.
Apertures, shutter speeds, exposure settings and ISO's:
Many photographers prefer to put the camera on aperture priority. This means that you manipulate the amount of light entering the lens and therefore the appropriate shutter speed automatically set by the camera. The effect that it has on the image is o's depth of field and when applied to wildlife photography, it can be critical. For example, when photographing a bird, getting the eye in focus is important and so an aperture of around 9 is appropriate. The wider the aperture the greater the depth of field, the more the background blurs out. The wider the aperture, the more light comes through the lens and therefore the faster the shutter. Basically, it pays to play with the settings.Using the shutter priority allows for to manipulate the shutter speed. This is handy when you want to be more creative and go for what we call a motion blur image. It is also used for long exposure shots like of the moon. Or it is used to attain the fastest shutter speed that your lens will allow to freeze the action.From advise to experience, setting a digital camera to under expose by 2/3rds of a stop will generally give you a much more saturated and contrasted image. This especially with the bright light available in Africa. Under exposing also increases your shutter speed thus helping to avoid camera shake and therefore achieving a sharper image. The ISO settings on the camera allow one to shoot in low light conditions, for example when the sun goes down. Upping your ISO will help to increase your shutter speed and therefore diminish camera shake.
After your safari:
Getting home with all your images and having the luxury of time to go through them can be as much fun as the safari itself! The very first thing I do though is to back them up for a second time on an external hard drive. (Who said that digital photography is cheap!) From there, I go through each image on a viewer ( a programme or software often supplied with the camera) to extract the very best of my images. This can be tough but the best advise to be your own worst critic! The rule of thumb however is that if you hesitate don't delete. You want to avoid disappointment! It is true that you can take a thousand shots to get a handful! This exercise of going through your images one by one will vastly improve your knowledge of photography and thanks to the digital
era you can even inspect your shutter speeds, ISO and apertures right there! If you have chosen to shoot large JPEG files, it is advisable to save all them as a TIFF file. JPEGS diminish in quality the more you open them up.
Lastly:
Photography is about having fun and the camera is a tool used to record. We always suggest to people to practise before travelling out here. If you have a pet cat or dog, get them to model for you from portrait style images to action. See if you can get your dog to chase a ball and then try and get a sharp image of it. This will show you just how tricky a good wildlife shot can be to attain. Practise different settings so that you have a basic knowledge before coming out. We will show you the rest.
Photographing wildlife is a challenging aspect of photography. The photographer is up against numerous nuances that include the subjects behaviour and the available light. Light is probably the single greatest consideration. Studying and analysing the light around you is a good start to getting a good image. This exercise can be done anywhere and at any time, wherever you are in the world. Natural light is constantly moving as is often the case with your subject. So second to the study of light is knowing and understanding your subject. Knowing your subjects behaviour patterns allows you to anticipate movement and behaviour giving you a much greater chance of getting a good shot. When it comes to being on safari, your guide is critical as often they are the ones reading the light and the animals behaviour.
Choosing equipment:
The body:
Choosing photographic equipment today brings its own challenges. There is simply so much to choice. Of course it can be narrowed down to the larger well known brands. I think it is important to consider just how much use you would like to get out of your equipment. Photography is a wonderful hobby that can be used to make extra money with. If you are keen then by all means consider equipment that will not out date to rapidly and where the technology will allow for upgrading your camera body and where the lenses will remain compatible.
The body: The first consideration is the number of mega pixels. Currently, one can buy an excellent body that offers over 10 million pixels. This is a good entry level number of pixels for enlarging and helps when cropping after the image has been taken. The other important factor is the material used for the camera casing. If you envisage using the camera frequently in tough conditions for example on safari, you may want to look at sturdier bodies. The number of focus points, the number of frames per second and the ability to shoot in RAW is equally important. A RAW file can be described as a negative and can never be minipulated - one can open them and save them as a TIFF or a JPEG. On these new files, one can make adjustments like cropping and sharpening. Using the RAW setting on the camera will mean shooting in the largest file available to your camera body.
The lens:
In the first paragraph, I spoke of the importance of light. The lens is critical for sharp, crisp images and when choosing a lens, please consider the glass. The professional series lenses from the various companies allow for much greater clarity and this by comparison to normal lenses can be the difference between a mediocre shot and a great shot. Wildlife photography starts at first light and ends just after the sun goes down (provided you don't have a flash.) It is therefore important to consider the aperture of the lens that you are a buying. A 2.8 lens is ideal as it will allow for the most amount of light coming into the lens especially at sunrise and sunset. When the sun is up, the same lens will allow for faster shutter speeds. Having said that, I use a 4 - 5.6, 100 to 400mm L series lens from Canon and it has been a valuable and versatile lens for what I need. Strong magnification is
important and I believe that a minimum of 400mm is required. Many lens and bodies come with image stabilisers and this helps hugely when it comes to getting a fast result when there is little time. To sum up - the faster the lens, the more light it lets in, the better your chances are of freezing the action and diminishing camera shake.
Stabilising equipment:
Keeping your equipment still is crucial. This can be achieved by using a tripod, monopod or beanbag. Tripods are not always useful as the majority of images are taken from a game viewing vehicle. They can be clumsy in the small amount of space available to you on the car and also add to your luggage weight when travelling abroad. Monopods not only take up little space but are practical on the vehicle. Beanbags are excellent but one has to make sure that there will be somewhere to set it up. Not all cars have a convenient bar in front of you to rest on. The monopod with an image stabilizing lens or body will do the trick.
Memory capacity:
Most people no longer travel with their laptops as there are so many alternatives available for storing your images. The first and most obvious is your memory cards. Today you can purchase cards with high memory capabilities. However, I like to use a photo reader as it allows me to edit on safari if need be. These readers can now go to 120 GB and more, which is plenty for a 10 day safari. I like the Epson P5000 as it portrays true colour and allows me to view the image at 100%. This will tell you if you have achieved sharp focus or if camera shake has cost you the shot. The viewer acts like an external hard drive and so it is easy to use as part of your back system. I have noticed through the years that people easily take around 2000 to 3000 images on a safari. And so you can work out that you will need at least 30GB for a 8.2 mega pixel camera shooting in RAW. The rule is the more the better because we never know just how much we will do and it is better to be prepared. One word of caution - I met a traveller that had just bought a 8GB memory card that could not be read by his older model digital camera. Please check with the assistant who sells you the card or with the manufacturer of your camera.
Apertures, shutter speeds, exposure settings and ISO's:
Many photographers prefer to put the camera on aperture priority. This means that you manipulate the amount of light entering the lens and therefore the appropriate shutter speed automatically set by the camera. The effect that it has on the image is o's depth of field and when applied to wildlife photography, it can be critical. For example, when photographing a bird, getting the eye in focus is important and so an aperture of around 9 is appropriate. The wider the aperture the greater the depth of field, the more the background blurs out. The wider the aperture, the more light comes through the lens and therefore the faster the shutter. Basically, it pays to play with the settings.Using the shutter priority allows for to manipulate the shutter speed. This is handy when you want to be more creative and go for what we call a motion blur image. It is also used for long exposure shots like of the moon. Or it is used to attain the fastest shutter speed that your lens will allow to freeze the action.From advise to experience, setting a digital camera to under expose by 2/3rds of a stop will generally give you a much more saturated and contrasted image. This especially with the bright light available in Africa. Under exposing also increases your shutter speed thus helping to avoid camera shake and therefore achieving a sharper image. The ISO settings on the camera allow one to shoot in low light conditions, for example when the sun goes down. Upping your ISO will help to increase your shutter speed and therefore diminish camera shake.
After your safari:
Getting home with all your images and having the luxury of time to go through them can be as much fun as the safari itself! The very first thing I do though is to back them up for a second time on an external hard drive. (Who said that digital photography is cheap!) From there, I go through each image on a viewer ( a programme or software often supplied with the camera) to extract the very best of my images. This can be tough but the best advise to be your own worst critic! The rule of thumb however is that if you hesitate don't delete. You want to avoid disappointment! It is true that you can take a thousand shots to get a handful! This exercise of going through your images one by one will vastly improve your knowledge of photography and thanks to the digital
era you can even inspect your shutter speeds, ISO and apertures right there! If you have chosen to shoot large JPEG files, it is advisable to save all them as a TIFF file. JPEGS diminish in quality the more you open them up.
Lastly:
Photography is about having fun and the camera is a tool used to record. We always suggest to people to practise before travelling out here. If you have a pet cat or dog, get them to model for you from portrait style images to action. See if you can get your dog to chase a ball and then try and get a sharp image of it. This will show you just how tricky a good wildlife shot can be to attain. Practise different settings so that you have a basic knowledge before coming out. We will show you the rest.
