Eactivist said: > >I'd like some pointers on evaluating technical aspects of my photos. I > >take a lot of pictures of animals, and some of them I ask the shop to do a ...
> I've done the same thing, tried wild life photography with a cheap zoom. > Results are not that good. Though as far as grain goes, you should be able to get > 8x10's with minimal grain. Maybe you need to dump your cheap zoom and get a > better cheap zoom. The animals around here, again, are often in shade. Just the > local conditions. I stop down (up?) if needed. Go one stop bigger (say from 4 > to 5.6 ) if the animal is in shade (stop down from what the meter says) and > let the highlights burn out and crop later. Tripod is not always helpful if the > animals are moving around a lot. And most TCs fail in deep shade and with the > aperture stopped down (up?). I have a cheap reflex lens, but the cheap zoom plus cheap TC seem to give brighter, more contrasty pictures. Which says something about the quality of that cheap reflex! > > Most of my stuff is still cr_p, but I find I am improving a tad. So I figure, > just practice. Take lots and lots of shots and hope one is a keeper. Taking > pictures of wild life may be one of the hardest areas of photography. Not that > landscapes aren't hard, they have their own trickiness. It's just that animals > don't really cooperate. ;-) I like to play with the animals, and photography is one way to do it. For me, it's more the case that photography is something to do in the woods, rather than animals being something to do with a camera. But I have noticed that they usually don't take directions very well. > > And I have figured, for myself, somehow someday, I have to get some good big > glass. I see no way around it for achieving decent shots. I've feared the same thing. But I know in some ways I'm self-limited rather than equipment limited. I took a photo of a young fox that was looking over its shoulder at me, and it's incredibly cute. Composition-wise it's the best fox photo I've taken, except that the weeds in the foreground are in good focus and the fox is blurred. I might never get that pose again in my life. Oh, well. Even out of focus, it's still darn cute. > > HTH, but probably not. > > Also, it is nice if there are animals you can sort of "revisit," where they > can get used to you coming around at the same times of day and things. Makes > them less spooked on the whole. Also no sudden moves, don't look them in the > eye, and turn off the beep on your camera if it has one, but I am sure you know > all that. I'm starting to work on the young foxes. They don't seem especially alarmed if I keep some distance, but it's completely up to them where they want to be at a particular time. When we met, they actually ran up and sat down to watch me, but they didn't stay long. For a too-short while we had this little game where they'd meet me at one end of a brush pile, run away, and meet me again at the other end. I've noticed with foxes, though, that sometimes you can jump up and down and wave your arms, and they'll just watch you. But if you try to talk to them, they'll run. I figured talking would reassure them because predators try to sneak up on their prey, but I was wrong.
