Wildlife basics

[Duncan16]

Hi All,
I am fairly new, my question is what setting would you use for. Any wild life photo's when you don't wont to use flash?
I have a Canon 450d and would like to take it off Auto o

 

[artyman]

How long is a piece of string? It depends on the animal/bird is it moving and how fast or flying, how much light is there? Basically a fast enough shutter to freeze movement 1/800 for a bird in flight, as narrow an aperture to give some reasonable depth of field to cover focusing errors and a high enough ISO to make sure it's properly exposed.

Then there is the question of what metering mode to use, now a bird in flight against a light sky is probably going to throw the metering off, and so with all this I think you firstly need to do some serious reading on photography fundamentals of exposure and metering. Then practice, most wildlife shooting is about patience

 

[Cichlid]

As a basic, the sky, on a bird in flight, will throw the metering out. This will leave the subject underexposed. My rule of thumb is to + 1 to 2 stops to the meter reading. It works very well. I hope this helps. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory!

 

[fracster]

I use aperture priority for all my wildlife stuff.Very,very rarely shutter priority. Read the sports section on here, the two are related to a certain degree.

I don`t use Canon, so have no idea about your camera.Camera basics are not brand specific though. Sometimes you will need shutter speed, sometimes that will mean High ISO, sometimes everything will fall into place, sometimes not.

The most important advice is patience, if you don`t have that, pack it in now.

You can have all the best stuff in the world, but without patience and ,just as importantly, understanding, you will fail.

I always advise that you should go to your local park/pond/ bird sanctuary and practice. learn how your camera works and how differing settings apply. When you have done that, then the adventure begins..............

 

[Nawty]

The key to understanding photography is understanding exposure, that means the shutter speed/aperture/ISO triangle:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm

Once you understand that you can apply it to ANY type of photography...

By the way, normally triple only has one 'p'

 

[rohit]

Wildlife photographers usually needs as much focal length as they can carry or can afford.

Wildlife is just that - wild - and alive. Get too close and your subject is off to the next county. The farther away you can be from your subject, the more likely you will have time to get multiple natural shots of your quarry.
Keep this rule in your mind and you will be perfect...

 

[Duncan16]

Thanks for the tips, as a newby these are a little over my head. as for the extra "P" I will ammend.
I have asked about going on courses etc however the one I went to for a day was already past the standard I am at so it was money wasted (for me anyway)

thanks again for your help.

 

[Duncan16]

Thank you,

I am trying to find a way of shotting things so I can gain extra understanding of how things work. I guess the "wildlife" would be the wrong thing to start with in this case.

thank you. I have a number of books but it just will not go in!!! one day it will click and then I will be ok...... I hope.

 

[pooley]

Duncan,

I'm not too far from you. If you want to drop me a PM I'll give you a few ideas where you can get close to wildlife locally with the gear you have.

Mike

 

[Duncan16]

Duncan,

I'm not too far from you. If you want to drop me a PM I'll give you a few ideas where you can get close to wildlife locally with the gear you have.

Mike

o send a message across on flicker, i'm on there as Duncan 16659 if that helps any

Hi mike,

Sorry I am unsure how t