My advice, if you can select the focus spot with the camera you use, is to select the eye of the subject which is closest to you. This is what portrait photographers usually do, and it is valid for animals as well.

There's something psychological about this. When the eyes are in focus, the photograph appears more in-focus, more natural. With a telephoto lens the plane of focus and depth of field are very narrow indeed, and this can make all the difference in the world.

As an example, on this buff, had I let the camera just focus on the middle of the frame, the head would not have been in sharp focus. I focused on the eye, and the photograph looks OK.




Same method on this zebra picture, focus on the eye.



Even on a broadside shot, like for this lion, I focus on the eye that is visible. You never know if you'll want to crop the photo later to frame just the head, for instance, so here again I focused on the eye.



It's a very simple rule-of-thumb and can make your pictures look better. Works on people too. So, learn how to use your camera body to move the focus point to the correct place for your composition.

Great tip. Thanks.

Yep that's an old school rule that I was taught 45 years ago at the Naval photography school & also use a shallow depth of field to through the background out of focus & make the subject pop.

Great shots Wink. Did you take them?

quote:

Originally posted by D Humbarger:

Great shots Wink. Did you take them?

Yes I did, a couple of weeks ago (7th of December) at Nairobi National Park. Buff (f/4, 1/500th of a second, ISO 800) and Zebra (f/6.3, 1/2500th of a second, ISO 400) were taken with the Nikkor 300mm f/4 lens on a Nikon D7000 (equivalent 450mm). Lion photo (f/5.6, 1/800th of a second, ISO 800) was taken with the 28-300mm Nikkor zoom lens at 210mm on a Nikon D700. All three cropped to 2:1 ratio and downsized and tweaked for saturation and sharpness for web posting. I posted some others from the same day here:

http://forums.accuratereloadin...6103246/m/2711097491

Nice work. Thanks for the link.

Thanks for the tip. And the great pics too. I will pass it on to The Designated Photo Shooter Mrs. Tex.

One of our purchases for the next hunt will be a new camera. I have always been a Canon guy, except for a Minolta 7000. Film - - - whats that stuff. LOL. I always thought that Nikons lenses were probably better, and they probably were, but these days it seems Canon is back there if not ahead of Nikon some in the digital cameras and lenses.

I am thinking we are going to get the Canon 70D. Even though it is a crop camera it should have a lot of application there with the 18 - 135 IS lens and maybe their excellent but inexpensive 50mm lens . We should get good use out of it with my daughters horse riding too.

And you know what, I might lug along that old Maxxum 7000 with Velvia loaded in it for the full frame landscape style shots.

What do you think about that set up for non professionals ?

quote:

Originally posted by TexKD:
Thanks for the tip. And the great pics too. I will pass it on to The Designated Photo Shooter Mrs. Tex.

One of our purchases for the next hunt will be a new camera. I have always been a Canon guy, except for a Minolta 7000. Film - - - whats that stuff. LOL. I always thought that Nikons lenses were probably better, and they probably were, but these days it seems Canon is back there if not ahead of Nikon some in the digital cameras and lenses.

I am thinking we are going to get the Canon 70D. Even though it is a crop camera it should have a lot of application there with the 18 - 135 IS lens and maybe their excellent but inexpensive 50mm lens . We should get good use out of it with my daughters horse riding too.

And you know what, I might lug along that old Maxxum 7000 with Velvia loaded in it for the full frame landscape style shots.

What do you think about that set up for non professionals ?

I don't have any experience with Canon DSLRs, but I really like my S95 which I take with me even when I have my big rigs. I would guess that any modern Canon DSLR would work just fine. You might want to talk to some people who have experience with both the 18-135mm and the 18-200mm. If the 18-200mm provides as good or better image quality (and IS) then that would be my choice for a lens for an Africa trip. It seems I always need more reach when photographing animals.

My personal bias is for Nikon of course. Unless you are going to go for very expensive high end Canon lenses, I think you'll get better quality out of last year's Nikon than this year's Canon, at least in terms of bang for buck. Will what you are proposing to buy be better and less expensive than this body/lens kit:

http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-D7...-MODEL/dp/B0042X9LC4

Click on the "with 18-200mm" box to get the bundle price. Anyway, food for thought.

Thank you Wink.

While I like the Nikons, this Canon gets some top reviews all over from guys like Camera Lab etc versus say the Nikon 7100. One of the few things missing is the multiple C settings and having a dual card. That said it has probably the top video going in its class, built in WiFi etc. It has speed to burn too .

So I went to the local camera shop and looked at them and snagged the 70D with the 18-135 IS and Canon's incredible little 50mm f/1.8 lens for it too as it is too good not to have.

I did take your advise above though, and we are going to add the 70-300 IS lens for it too. I thought we would take it and do some shooting and get the feel for it and then add that lens especially for the horse riding shots and for Africa.

I would have probably gotten the Nikon if I had a bag full of Nikor lenses already though.

Congratulations on getting a modern DSLR. You are certainly correct about the greater popularity of Canon cameras when video is a major factor in any comparison. I never use my DSLRs for video, in fact hardly ever take any video, so it never has had any bearing on my photography, camera choices or lens choices.

Show us some of your Africa pics when you get back.

We don't shoot a lot of video either really. While we do have a video camera, we like stills, and then you have to have the other video camera right there and ready to go.

But this seemed a good chcice again considering the work it will get on my daughters horse riding. If you do want video of the 3 mins she is in the arena, then you are ready to go right away without more set up and stuff to wag around.

I was quite surprised to find that video was a selling point of a still camera. LOL .. You are right I needed to go modern here. LOL. I don't have a single video on my iPhone and only about a 200 total pics shot over years.

If I even get close to your kind of shots I will be happy.

Now with the better equipment I will probably end up hiring a photographer for the hunt LOL. You know how it goes. On one of my hunts the PH said let me look through and try those new binoculars you have there. He snagged them and we went off hunting LOL.

The truth is probably the ease of operation of this new Canon for us non-pros is probably the single biggest factor that lured me over to Canon. But had I already had Nikon lenses then no question that we would have gone to the 7100.

Thank you Wink for your efforts and encouragement too.

Tex,

There's a lot to learn about all the camera controls on a digital SLR. However, if you do decide to experiment with manual or semi-automatic picture taking, know that with your two zoom lenses they will always be sharpest at f/8. You won't always be able to use that aperture (if there's not enough light and you need a higher shutter speed) but when you can at least you'll know you're getting the most out of the lens.

The other thing I would take control over is the ISO. The camera will always give better results (less noise, more dynamic range) if you can keep the upper limit to ISO 600. Here again, at least you will know you're getting the most out of the camera's sensor.

Now that doesn't mean that pictures taken with the zooms at f/4 or at ISO 1600 won't be any good, on the contrary, modern DSLR's do an excellent job throughout almost all of their range. It does mean that if you could take the same picture at f/8 and ISO 200 you will be able to see the difference on a large size print or on a large screen, but probably not on a downsized jpg for viewing on the web.

The photo of the waterbucks below was taken with a Nikkor 28-300mm zoom lens at 160mm (not a lens known for being sharp), aperture set at f/8 (shutter speed 1/125 and ISO 800). To use f/8 I had to use a medium high ISO and a slow shutter speed, but I was steady, focus was correct and the picture came out nice and sharp.



The point is, the Nikon D700 camera is only 12MP and the lens is nothing to dream about if lab tests are the criteria for buying it, but I got the most out of the equipment by selecting the optimum aperture for the lens and by staying within the sensor's range of low noise by not going to very high ISO's. As in shooting a rifle, the steadier the hold, the better the results.

Tex,

I took a look at the DxOMark lens tests and the little Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is a very good lens, giving excellent results in terms of sharpness at all apertures from f/2.8 to f/8, with its absolute best at f/5.6 (where the corners are as sharp as the center). I would avoid using f/1.8 and f/11 if possible and f/22 will be downright awful (in comparison) because of diffraction. Which by the way is the case with almost all lenses on digital sensors when at f/16 and higher.

Thank you for the tips and inputs Wink.

My wife continues to just get familiar with the new Canon. But she isn't , and most certainly I am not, any kind of real photographer . But it is still fun.

We now have a lot more capability with the new Canon 70D than we did before . We probably could have gotten improved capability with a less expensive camera too. But somewhat like rifles, I would like to get one (camera) and run it for a while.

But these things change up quite often as you know . Canon however had not come with as much of an upgrade in 3-4 years so I figure we can get at least double that or 8 years or maybe more out of it . As I said I still have my 7000 !

She was quite happy with some shots out of the Canon with the 50mm lens too .

I can tell we are going to need more storage space or we are going to have to weed out some pics LOL !

quote:

Originally posted by TexKD:
Thank you for the tips and inputs Wink.

My wife continues to just get familiar with the new Canon. But she isn't , and most certainly I am not, any kind of real photographer . But it is still fun.

We now have a lot more capability with the new Canon 70D than we did before . We probably could have gotten improved capability with a less expensive camera too. But somewhat like rifles, I would like to get one (camera) and run it for a while.

But these things change up quite often as you know . Canon however had not come with as much of an upgrade in 3-4 years so I figure we can get at least double that or 8 years or maybe more out of it . As I said I still have my 7000 !

She was quite happy with some shots out of the Canon with the 50mm lens too .

I can tell we are going to need more storage space or we are going to have to weed out some pics LOL !

Save the photos

A friend of mine introduced me to USB hard drive docking station. These things don't cost much, and you can plug into them dock-able SATA drives. I have several self-powered external WD hard drives, but the docking station idea saves me a lot of cash, since dock-able drives (without enclosures) are quite cheap.

Thanks Ray - BTW there used to be a Ray Alaska here on AR I think .

I will look in to that dock .

At the minute I was thinking that when I order a new Mac computer I would get that new round black Mac with the 3 TB in it . If it can't hold it and do it we got wayyyy too much stuff.

BTW Wink - Did you use photo enhancing software to create that final watebuck photo above? The detail and color and contrast is just great .

quote:

Originally posted by TexKD:
BTW Wink - Did you use photo enhancing software to create that final watebuck photo above? The detail and color and contrast is just great .

I shot the photo as a RAW file, with all camera settings at Neutral (or Off) except for Sharpening which I set on the maximum, which is 9 on the D700. I opened the file in Capture NX2 to crop it to a 2:1 ratio, resize it to 1200 pixels on the long side, change the color profile to sRGB (it was shot in Adobe RGB) and I may have added a little Saturation before adjusting the sharpness with a Highpass Filter adjustment. This is pretty much my standard procedure on all my photos, but they don't all come out as well as the Waterbuck photo.

The size of those RAW files is what has me thinking 3 TB.

Your shot is a great photo and image above though.

We don't expect to do that level of work. But if we have the RAW files I at least know some pros who can do some nice work.

quote:

Originally posted by TexKD:
The size of those RAW files is what has me thinking 3 TB.

Your shot is a great photo and image above though.

We don't expect to do that level of work. But if we have the RAW files I at least know some pros who can do some nice work.

After you run one or two actions using NIK plugins to that RAW file, it grows to an enormous proportion

I have several WD external hard drives to save my photos, most 2TB in size. But a friend of mine who is a computer technician, introduced me to a USB hard drive dock for SATA drives. I buy the internal hard drives at Amazon or Newegg, and when I need to use them I plug the USB dock to the computer, and plug the drive to the dock.

When I get the drives new, I us a disk utility to format the drives before I save files or photos to it.

This is taken with a 85mm 1.2 …Love to just to play with DOF and focus on the eyes with this portrait lens.

Some great examples of selective depth of field. And excellent photography as well!

quote:

Originally posted by TexKD:
Thanks Ray - BTW there used to be a Ray Alaska here on AR I think .

I will look in to that dock .

At the minute I was thinking that when I order a new Mac computer I would get that new round black Mac with the 3 TB in it . If it can't hold it and do it we got wayyyy too much stuff.

That Mac is just too expensive. You can do the same with an iMac with a 21" screen, although they not longer come with a DVD drive. But external DVD drives are quite cheap these days.

I usually buy Macs with a university discount, and later buy the RAM modules I need from "crucial.com" This way I can have a huge amount of RAM that's fully compatible but cheaper than the one at Apple.

I use PS CS5 or CS6 with Google's NIK plugins.

Thank you for those inputs Ray .

Wifey has been firing away with the new Canon camera at horses etc to get the feel of the new camera and try settings etc. So we are at least using the new stuff. Been working on her "eye" focusing too .

I am going to up my computer sometime. Probably to one of the new IMacs as we had gotten for her in December. But I am sure going to look into the storage as you suggest .