Novice photographer seeks shortcuts
 

Hi everyone -- I've been practicing a bit with my Canon 30D dSLR in attempt to get ready for my trip at the end of June. I have a Canon 70-300 IS lens, and this will be my big leap from point-and-shoot.

I'm just a beginner, but I'm looking forward to improving my skills. I'm writing now to see if anyone would be willing to share a couple of "tips" or "tricks" a novice photographer could apply to improve their safari pictures. I know that the most important thing is to take advantage of the best light of the day, at sunrise and sunset. Are there other words of wisdom that would be easy to convey in a forum like this that could make a big (or even small) difference?

I also have a very specific question. I know that many of you do a lot of post-shooting computer processing, either to RAW or JPEG images, and, thanks to Tom and others, I've learned how important and effective that can be. But, knowing myself, I don't think I'll have much patience for post-processing work. Therefore, I'm planning to shoot in JPEG, and to maximize the use of "in-camera" processing by using the "customization" options that my Canon 30D offers.

So, here's my question: For those of you who shoot in RAW (and JPEG, for that matter), are there certain types of adjustments that you tend to routinely make in Photoshop to your safari photos that I might try and crudely approximate by through in-camera settings? For example, do you often or generally find it necessary to increase (or decrease) the contrast, or the color saturation, or the color temperature? If so, is it by a consistent number of degrees/percent? And/or do you always have to almost always have to adjust the white balance in a certain way? (I just learned these terms this weekend, when reading the camera manual). And/or do you generally "sharpen" the entire image? Or anything else that you routinely do to these sorts of images (i.e. wildlife photographs taken in Africa in the winter with a telephoto lens) that is applied (or could be applied) to the entire image?

And for those of you who shoot in JPEG, are there particular in-camera settings that you've found are particularly useful for the winter safari context? Bonus points for settings on a Canon 30 or 40D!

I know the correct answer is that (1) it is most effective to do these things selectively and with precision after the fact in Photoshop; (2) applying them in-camera is a crude and blunt instrument that will permanently alter the image and is bound to fail; and (3) if I insist on doing it anyway, I should figure it out the most effective settings myself through trial and error. Despite all that, I'm still hoping for a few helpful tips. Any thoughts??

(Feel free to be as "technical" as you'd like, and I'll try and translate to figure out if something comparable can be done with my camera. In other words, your answer will be helpful even if you have no idea what can be adjusted on a Canon 30D.)

Thanks so much!!!

When I shot with film, I used a warming filter when on safari. With digital cameras, that won't work because the camera will just compensate for it. Therefore, I use a "Cloudy Day" setting and that warms up the photos a bit.

I find I tend to increase saturation for many images, but I generally keep my saturation/contrast settings low as a starting point for raw processing. (I shoot only raw.) I would also suggest being careful not to clip your highlights (use the "flashing highlights" option and/or check your histogram). You can recover a bit of overexposure from a raw file, but JPEG is less forgiving.

I know you said you planned on shooting JPEG to eliminate post-processing (PP), but I think you'll find you'll still need to do some to get the best image (e.g., for web display or printing). For me, I find doing the PP on a raw file much easier than on a JPEG, so I thought I'd make a suggestion. DPP (Digital Photo Professional), which is on the Canon CD, has a batch conversion option. (Photoshop, CS or Elements, also has this ability. In fact, in Elements (perhaps CS too, but I don't use it), there's a "auto" optimize option that works pretty well.) You could shoot raw as if you're shooting JPEG, then batch convert. Then, any images you really want to optimize, you go back to the raw and manually convert for the best quality. PP may seem like a lot of work, but I find I can get much improved images with only a few minutes (if that) of work per image.

Paul

I´m learning photoshop now and am shooting only raw but I´ve always shooted in JPEG in my trips to Africa. One thing that I am always correcting in Photoshop is the white balance, so I would think of it during the day as the sun light changes.
One important think you should do as you are going to shoot in JPEG is to bracket the exposure on your main shots (it´s called AEB on your 30D). You just have to say to the camera how many stops you want to bracket and the camera will take 3 shots in different exposures. Than you decide wich on them you prefer later.

I am not a wizard on the computer processing procedure, but none the less I still muddle away after shooting in RAW format.

At the end of the day if the picture is lousy it doesn't matter how much processing you do, you will never change what you have shot. So my tips relate to taking the photograph rather than the process after.

1) Composition. Take some time to assess your thirds. Consider how much of the background you want and how much detail you want to expose.

2) Subject. Again, figure out what makes the subject dramatic and compose accordingly.

3) Movement. Wildlife is most interesting when it is active, so figure out how to capture the essence of the beast in movement.

And those are my tips.

As a rule I set my aperture to its widest, around 2.8 or 3.2. I do this to blur the background as often the activity interferes with my subject and makes the image too busy.

If I am shooting a herd or hunt situation I will close down the aperture to 8 and lower to a) improve my chances of keeping predator and prey in focus and b) to emphasize the size and scope of the herd.

To show the movement I slow my shutter speed, occasionally using a fill in flash to freeze the subject and keep the blur of activity. AND I always focus on the subjects eye. I will also try and only shoot when the eye of the subject catches the light.

Lastly, the bean bag will be your best friend, so select your seat in the vehicle where you will have access to a solid part of the vehicle to give you support. In closing perspective is important too, too many good pictures end up being average due to the shooting perspective, try and change your position and get down low, say shooting up to an animal..

Over to you.

This is very, very useful information. Thanks so much to all of you.

Would love to hear from others, so keep the suggestions coming!

For photography, try to keep the sun behind you. I find the rangers will work with you on this if they can. Also, don't chop off legs if you can help it. If the animal is standing in the grass/brush leave enough room in the frame as if you can see their legs. If you want a tighter shot be aware where you are chopping off the limbs. You can get a tighter shot with a crop but you can't add space for virtual legs (not easily, anyway).

Have fun!

It’s possible to spend a lot of time in post but, Sanchag is right, Canon DPP (digital Photo Professional) is simple to use and with only one or two easily made corrections to “challenged” photos, you can make a world of difference.

Canon DPP has a one click white balance correction or more white balance options if you prefer.

Having said that, this “fix in post” trend is a huge, huge, misguided mistake, besides composition, correct lighting is the key. As you said, shooting at the golden hours is the way to go.

Shoot only in RAW, you always want to capture in the highest possible quality available.

Batch convert with the programs suggested by Sanchag or....

Irfan View, an outrageously popular program with the pros (quick) is FREE, simple to use and will convert any amount of RAW files to any format you’d like and do much, much more when you are “ready”
http://www.irfanview.net/

You can also play with the size of photos using the FREE and useful Windows XP Image Resizer:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...chelman2.mspx1


Work hard to keep your lens clean. Clean them and clean them again and again. Keep the cloth in separate zip baggies. Bring several.

Many cameras now give you the option of shooting Raw+Jpg.This could be a solution for you.All you have to do is make sure you have plenty of space with external hard drives,computer or others.

You have the jpg files to use immediately without much post processing but, you still have the raws just in case.

I did shoot Jpg(i do in RAW the last 3 years)and when i didn´t have the golden light, i liked to give my photos a warmer sensation playing with the white balance (-2 or -3) and some times setting to cloudy.
A polarized filter may help also when the light is flat.

Here are a few photo tips that i consider very interesting:

http://www.africa-nature-photography...technique.html

and


http://www.nigeldennis.com/tips.htm


The inexpensive book "Essential Wildlife Photography" by Richard Du Toit has some good advice too,you can get it in Amazon.


Paco.

isabell25, No question but that you have received some very useful advice here. Still you will need to discover your own style and develop your own techniques. I would strongly recommend you visit www.andybiggs.com website and check out the safari tips he provides. There is a particulaly useful article on depth of field that illustrates one one of the posters above mentioned. Sometimes you want to work with wide aperatures, sometimes you want to work with small apperatures. Motion blur is a cool way of showing motion but remember to keep some major portion of your subject in focus. Wildlife photography is a whole lot more than just animal portraits. Here are a couple of basic tips for working with your gear 1) use center point only focus point, 2)focus on the animals eye, 3)take enough exposures to perhaps catch the natural catchlight in the sunjects eye, 4) keep your shuuter speeds at least 1 and 1/2 times the reciprocal of your lens focal length (unless you are after motion blur), 5) shoot from as low a position as possible from whatever vehicle you are in (windows or even door sills) everything looks more interesting when NOT shot looking down onto the subjects back 6) beanbag(s) whenever possible 6)take lots and lots and lots of memory, it's cheep and you can't be thinking economy when presented with a once in a lifettime opportunity. I don;t shoot the Canon 30D anymore but when I did I found the auto whitebalance pretty good. You can adjust it later (photoshop) if you are unhappy but it not a big deal. I shoot RAW + L Jpeg and usually process all of the Raw, still its nice to have the Jpegs for quick review. Once you develop you own workflow you will find it isn't all that difficult to shoot in Raw and make most of your adjustments in DPP (the program provided by Canon). If you don't have the newest version released with the 40D, you can get it for free by downloading it from the Canon website. It will work with you Canon 30D and most people feel it is as good or better than most of the more expensive aftermarket (Photoshop CS3) products. Last tip-Get a waterproof pillowcase to keep your camera in while on drives between sightings. This helps to keep dust out of and out of everything important. When you return allow at least 6 months for processing your pictures and reliving your experiences.
Cheers-SafariChuck

In terms of tips for getting the best shots, I agree with several other posters: the key to a good photograph is almost always the light. When deciding where to look to take a picture, look in the areas where the light is favorable and not in the areas where it is not. In other words, "follow the light" when deciding where and when to shoot.
The other thing with wildlife is patience. You have to wait for the animal to get into the light, to look at the camera, or to do something else interesting. So you have to condition yourself to wait with your finger on the shutter release, ready to shoot.
In terms of settings for in-camera JPEGs, I cetainly do not recommend that as the way to get the best pictures; I always shoot RAW and I will never use JPEG again. But if you are set on shooting JPEG, I find the "faithful" picture style setting to be the best. It is a low-contrast setting that preserves low-contrast detail well, and then you can just increase the saturation a small bit in post-processing and crop and be done with it. If you shoot JPEG, you also have to be conscious of your white balance setting (auto works generally well for outdoor shooting but poorly indoors). That is another thing you can ignore if you shoot RAW.
Be sure as you are shooting to look at your pictures to check for over or under-exposure and retake the picture if you can with a different exposure compensation setting when necessary. The camera's metering method is not foolproof!

In the end, though, there is no substitute for experience, so shoot as much as possible in preparation for your trip. Experiment with different settings in different situations and see what you get. Being comfortable with how the camera works, how to change settings and what settings to use in what situations will make a big difference, I believe.

Chris

These are all great tips! I am going to Tanzania in 3 weeks and this is very helpful for me. Here is a specific question that I have: What is the minimum shutter speed to use when photographing animals in motion? I will primarily be using a 70-30mm IS lens with my Canon XTi. I would prefer to not have blurred photos so is something like 1/250 enough or should it be 1/500 ot 1/1000 or something else? Thanks!

Grumbo,
The old rule of thumb was to use the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens you are shooting. In other words, if you are shooting at 300mm you need at least 1/300 second shutter speed. If you are shooting at 70mm you need 1/70 second shutter speed and so on. However, your Canon XTi has a crop sensor (1.6 crop factor) so all of your focal lengths need to be multipled by 1.6 in order to get a better approximation of practical focal length. In other words, if you shoot with your zoom lens out to 300mm your practical focal length is 480mm so you need to shoot at 1/480 (use 1/500) of a second. Unless you want blur, try and keep your shutter speeds towards the high end. Your camera is cpable of some pretty nice stuff at higher ISO so don't be afraid of dailing in a higher ISO (sensitivity). This will allow you to shoot at faster shutter speeds. For optimum results with your lens you might want to try and shhot with it stopped down one or two f stops from fully open. Just my opinion of course, there are lots of skilled photgraphers on this board.
Cheers-Chuck

Grumbo, just a footnote to my post above. In practice I find many of my best images are taken at really slow shutter speeds (often slower than 1/100 of a second) thanks to the use of a good bean bag and a an image stabilzed lens. Practice your technique a bit and see how slow a shutter speed you can use. An obvious benefit of the slower speed is that you can often stop your lens down and so gain a greater depth of field. Hope this helps.
Chuck

Even more incredibly useful information. Thanks! I'm printing all of this out to study it carefully, and I'll be checking out the DPP software over the weekend. I will also be reading the other resources you've all recommended. And the composition pointers are truly invaluable. I wouldn't have thought to turn off the multi-point focusing system, for example, but now that SafariChuck mentions this it makes complete sense.

Grumbo, if I understand SafariChuck's point correctly, with a 70-300 lens zoomed in (out?) all the way to 300, he recommends using a minimum shutter speed of 1/450 for all subjects, even still ones. Is that right, SafariChuck?

The beanbag thing is totally perplexing to me. Trying to balance a beanbag while holding the camera steady seems like a recipe for disaster to me. What someone needs to invent is a hat with a camera mount that your spouse can wear on his (or her) head! :-)

Oops, SafariChuck, I posted my message before I noticed that you had already answered Grumbo's question.

Isable25, I like the bean bag hat idea; now if only I can convince my spouse. Actually if in East Africa you will probably be in an enclosed vehicle with a pop top of some sort. In that situation you place the bean bag on the solid part of the roof and the camera (or lens) on the bag. This help you steady it almost as much as a tripod. Also, (and this is my favorite) you can place the beanbag on the open window ledge and shoot out a window when practical. In Botswana or other regions that use an open vehicle it is far more difficult to find a stable platform from which to shoot but it can be done. The short answer though to your question is that you place the bean bag onto something solid and rest the camera/lens attop the bag. Hope this makes sense.
Chuck

To jump in on the shutter speed question, there are several considerations that can go into that issue, namely the focal length of your lens, the movement of the subject and whether you are handholdng or not (and how heavy the lens is if you are).

For a stationary subject I try to get close to the reciprocal of my lens focal length, even when using a monopod, because I find my "keeper rate" is higher. But a lot of the time the situation is such that I have to go a lot slower as Chuck mentioned, and I generally find that with some support (like a monopod) I can go down to 1/200 or 1/250 shooting at a focal length of 600mm on a 40D and with an IS lens.

Handholding with a stationary subject requires greater shutter speed relative to focal length, so for example with my 100-400, I always hand-hold and generally I need 1/250 or faster to get a decent chance of a sharp shot. I have gotten them as slow as 1/80 handheld, but that is not reliable.

When the subject is moving, the speed of movement will dictate the shutter speed you need. For a large animal walking slowly, 1/250 or 1/320 may be fine. For an animal running quickly, 1/500 or 1/1000 may be needed. And for birds in flight, I usually use 1/2000. Of course, sometimes a bit of blur can improve a picture, since it gives it a sense of movement, but trying to get a blur intentionally creates a risk that the shot will be more blurred than you want, so the success rate will be lower when you intentionally use a slow shutter speed on a moving subject.

Chris

Thanks everyone for the shutter speed advice. I guess I will have to play with the ISO a bit in lower light situations. I've always been worried about noise, but apparently the Canon XTi manages this pretty well.

So to summarize, if I use a 300mm lens on a 1.6x crop sensor the minimum shutter speed should be 1/480 (or 1/500 for simplicity). Doesn't the image stabilization give you 2 or 3 stops so could I go down to 1/125 or even 1/60 if I were very careful (like using a beanbag)? I bought the Kinesis beanbag and will fill it up with sand or whatever is available in Tanzania. Thanks.

Grumbo,
Short answer is that IS helps with blur caused by camera and lens movement. I has no benefit in stopping blur due to motion of the subject. Many wildlife enthusiasts set their cameras on Aperature Priority (AV), adjust ISO and then let the camera select shutter speed. I have been plesantly surprised when using very slow shutter speeds with image stabilized lenses but never with a moving subject (birds in particular).
Chuck

Chuck is totally right about this. The IS systems, at least on the Canon lenses I use, are very effective at letting you handhold at slow shutter speeds. For example, we have gotten sharp pictures with our 70-200/2.8 at 200mm with shutter speeds of 1/15 and 1/30 at 200mm. This is, of course, with non-moving subjects. As Chuck said, IS cannot do anything to freeze subject movement, so if you are trying to capture a moving subject, you must shoot at a sufficiently fast shutter speed to avoid a blurred image. When you get in low light, that means having a fast lens and increasing the ISO on the camera.

So, while IS is very useful and increases the versatility of a lens, it does not solve all low-light problems, and since wildlife subjects frequently move, IS is of only limited utility in allowing for wildlife pictures in low light, especially birds, which never sit still!

Chris

Now what do you say about bringing a laptop to download all the photos to? My laptop has about 60 gigs (I'm a novice too) but I have an external device of 120 gigs) which I hope is enough for my daughter and I to use to store all our photos. But then I thought.. should I bring DVD's too (or instead of) the external drive?
We're limited to weight, and I have a NIKON D 200 camera, a NIKON 80-400mm lens, plus a NIKON 35-70 (something like that).. plus of course the polarizing filters and all the battery chargers etc. I'm wondering how I'm going to carry all this on the planes to Tanzania along with the shampoo, conditioner, contact lens solutions and everything that shouldn't go in the checked soft sided duffels I read are recommended rather than hard sided wheeled luggage since total weight can only be 33 # including carry on, per person?
This is a great thread, and I'm going to print it out to take with me - we leave early June for Tanzania!

Taking a laptop is too much stuff to deal with, so we use portable storage devices. The ones I use are called Hyperdrives, and we travel with two of them. They are compact, fast and reliable. Much less weight and bulk than carrying a laptop. On our last trip, we took one 100GB one and one 120GB one -- for the next trip we will probably take two 250GB ones, so we can back up everything twice and since we are taking two camera bodies.
The amount of space you need is determined by whether you shoot RAW or JPEG and how trigger-happy you are. So it varies a lot between different people.

Chris

teadrinker, I agree with Chris entirely. A laptop is just too much to deal with and unless you intend to edit and photoshop your pics while on safari, not the way I would go. Instead take a (PSD)portable storage device (or 2). You might even consider buying enough flash memory so that you can get away without downloading anything but save all your original flash cards much the same way we used to save unprocessed film. If you do decide on a PSD the Hyperdrive are one of the best and most popular, Epson makes another (p3000 & p5000. For a good recent review of the Hyperdrive, take a look at http://luminous-landscape.com/review...erdrive/.shtml. That should give you some idea of one of the best and most complete units available. The Epson PSDs are slightly larger and have much smaller capacities (40 or 80 GB) but are very popular and have very nice displays. Some people like to use the Epson units to view movies etc. If you really get into photography you will want a small laptop eventually. I will be adding a newer laptop just as soon as the newest versions with high capacity (over 120 GB) flash memory, instead of a conventional hard drive, become available. Once I though laptops were the only way to go but now with all of the camera gear (large telephoto lenses, backup bodies etc.) I now take about 120GB of flash cards plus a personal storage device. I back everything up once and leave the original flash card intact until I return home and download to my computer. So you see there are several ways to skin this cat (oops, sorry Hari, you know what I mean ;-) )

I must have hit the post instead of review button? I hope the post reads correctly, at least my suggestions are pretty clear, sorry for typos.
Chuck

Seeking some help.
I was going back to some of my old raw photos and thought I would try them in DPP instead of Camera Raw and PSE (and CS3). Just cause it was 3:am and I had nothing better to do :-). Most of our photos are in IPhoto and I do not have a problem taking the raw files to the Adobe software programs from iphoto, but when I move them to DPP they revert to jpegs?
Any advice?

Thanks,
Keri

Hi Keri,
I think I understand your problem. Open DPP and click on tools. From the drop down menu click on preferences. Make certain that you check show only CR2 (raw files) and then the Raw files only should display. Otherwise it will display your JPEG file. Let me know if this helps.
Cheers-Chuck

Hi Chuck,
Are you using a Mac or PC?
I am on a Mac, trying to pull the cr2 files from iphoto to DPP. Having trouble.
Keri

Hi Keri,
Sorry I'm on a PC but I haven't heard of any difficulties bringing raw into DPP with either. Check to see if you have the "show only raw files" checked in the drop down menu under Tools/Preferences. If it is and you still have troubel it may be that you have an earlier version of DPP. You can get the latest DPP Version 3.4.1 right from the Canon sight. I beleive it came out on 5/20/08, so it may have fixed whatever bug you might be running up against. It a really nice program so I hope you can get it to work on your system. Good luck
Regards-Chuck

Thanks Chuck.
I will double check the version and update if need be.
Do you also use Adobe Camera Raw? I am downloading a tutorial for it now. I have enjoyed experimenting with it and figure I should take a "lesson". It is in PSElements6 and CS3.

When we went to Tanzania we shot very little raw files but bracketed every shot to be sure of a perfect exposure - then when we got home we only had to select photos not spend too much time in photoshop. We had over 10,000 images for our three week safari and while it took a couple weeks to get them down to a more managable 1000 we did very little 'work' to them. Your camera may have an auto-bracket feature so you will not have to think too much.
To see our images you can go to www.africanwildlifeandculturesafaris.com
I am working on my blog from our trip March 2007 and will post it when I get it finished.
have fun!

Keri,
I have used Adobe Camera Raw and Raw shooters essentials and they both were O.K.. I was on the lookout for a new RAW processor when Canon came out with DPP and like a lot of otehrs I was impressed. In particular, I like how it treats the colors. It really takes advantage of the additional information provided by having 14-bit RAW files. I did a little experiment and compared JPEGs prepared with Camera Raw and DPP. The DPP won hands down. I don;t know if it is better for everything but at least for my stuff is was much better. For example, I never previously was able to capture all of the shades seen in the Big Cats before. Now it seems that with DPP all of the subtle inbetween brown, red, and yellow colors come out. I batch process in DPP and export as 16-bit tif to a speperate folder. I open that folder with Photoshop and make my last adjustments (croping * sharpening) and then save as a 16-bit tif. I then Export the tif as a JPEG to another folder. I use the JPEGs for presentation and showing to friends. I erase my tif files since I can always go back to my RAW and redo if I making prints. That's my workflow, it's not really a big deal. You may have another scheme that fits your style but I would give DPP a try. It has won over lots of photographers. Heck, it is rare that a freebe of such quality comes along.
Regards-Chuck

Silverparrot, I just saw your post, are you and agent?? Yes bracketing JPGEs is another way to go but it never worked for me. First, no matter how I tried my exposures were never just right and often I missed the instant I was after (for example, the catchlight or expression). Keep in mind that JPEG files are lossy and processing them in camera still provides files that have already lost some information. Not important unless you intend to make very large prints (which I sometimes do).
Regards-Chuck

Hi Chuck,
I'm with you that Raw files are the best files - we do take Raw files - but for a novice it was just a suggestion. Although my back up camera (which I keep my wide angle lens on)can take as long to record a raw file as it does three jpegs. If I am trying to catch a bird in flight, or the gazelles on the move I get more shots off bracketing than I do shooting raw. I think it is time for some new equipment!
I am not an agent - we are helping a friend in Africa establish a tour company. We and act as his Canadian Liason - no money for us but our friend is generous to the charities on the site and that is fine with us.

Hi silverparrot, The reason I asked was that I thought the website you referenced was really very good. Some really very nice images. I can see why you are happy with the result. I sometimes make really large prints and so I hate to give up anything to lossy compression. For some reason, RAW processing scares people. Too bad they didn't stick a more friendly name on the sort of file it represents.
Regards-Chuck

Help please:
We just returned from Israel trip and for the first time I took all of the pictures in raw. I have now downloaded them to a seperate hard drive and now I do not know what to do.

How do I get them into a program that I can work in like Photoshop Elements? I will probably only do some basic editing for color etc and cropping.

I have a Pentax K100D camera.

Thanks

If you have PS Elements, you can open them directly. It will actually bring up Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and let you make some adjustments there, including exposure, white balance, and saturation. Then, if you click "Open Image" it will open it in PSE itself for additional editing (e.g., cropping).

Paul

spiegelcjs,
Paul is correct but I think you are asking a more basic how to question. Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think the following might help. Open Photoshop (elements 5 or 6) organizer, go to File/Get Photos and Videos/from files and folders and then select the hard drive and the specific folder that contains your raw images. Select all of the images you want to bring into the organizer and after editing them in photoshop, save as JPEGs. This should do it.
Cheers-Chuck

Chuck
Thanks for you help.

Keri

SafariChuck:
You are correct I need the real basics. The first thing Ineed to do is upgrade to either Photoshop 5 or 6. I think I only have 3. Once I do that I hope I will be ok. Most of the advice on the board is to shoot in RAW so that is what I did.

I do have a second question. Without the use of a laptop, is there anyway to project the images onto the TV screen so both my husband and I could look at the pictures together and decide what to delete. Once this is done then I can do the computer editing and transfer to a DVD.