Photographing Wildlife

[Beauty Through a Lens]

I am using a Nikkor 70-200mm f4. I will mostly be photographing a variety of small birds, eagles, and deer does any advice on how to get close enough without spooking them. Also which function is better Sport or Pets?

[Mark von Kanel]

Hello again Adrian,

getting close is the problem! stay downwind and hidden! shooting modes you need to move away from, and try to use either aperture or shutter priority or preferably manual take some time to get used to your camera, learn the exposure triangle, there are tutorials on here. you will progress more quickly if you take a little time to learn the basics.

[cuilin]

don't bother with sports or pets mode on the camera, you'll get much better results learning how to properly expose an image by choosing your own settings in aperture or shutter priority or manual mode as mark suggested. you may want to consider buying a teleconverter later on, it will get you closer, but will reduce the amount of light and some minor degradation of image quality. a tripod and cable release will also help you stay still and not spook the wildlife while getting your shots.

[Shadowman]

Birds in city parks are less skittish so start there for a little on the job training.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Adrian,

If you narrowed down your location a tad from "Canada", it may help people suggest reserves close to you for practice.

It might be useful for folks to know your camera model too, well at least whether it is FF or DX

As I'm sure you do appreciate, there are no shortcuts to obtaining the great pictures as we see posted here by others (OK, you might get lucky occasionally), as Mark and Beth have suggested above, you need to get to know your kit first, also learn photographic composition, using the light and avoiding distractions in the background, then learn field craft and we mustn't overlook that it would be wise to shoot RAW and know how to Post Process your images.

Anyone can go out with a camera and a nice lens and get something - I know, I do - but I don't know half the stuff I need to in order to match the best here - and consequently, most of my images don't - they might, if I invest the time to learn and practice, practice, practice.

So make a start, post the results here (just a few images), you will get better feedback if you read and use the advice in this post: How to Get Effective Feedback for your Posted Images

All the best, Dave

[NorthernFocus]

Hi, Adrian. The 70-200 f4 is an awesome lens. If you are shooting a DX format camera and particularly on of the 24mp variety, you have enough to get a start though you will need to be very patient as it will be difficult to get close enough for reasonable crops at 200mm. But that is an excellent quality bit of glass. An 300mm f4 would be much better but you've got what you've got.

As others have mentioned, going to parks or game reserves where the animals are somewhat habituated to people can be very helpful in getting within decent range. If you live near the coast you can visit marinas which are usually good hangouts for seagulls and bald eagles(I see you're in Canada). A bird feeder can provide good practice. Early on the important thing is to shoot. There are things to learn that are very specific to wildlife so shooting anything, anywhere is helpful.

Good luck and looking forward to seeing some of your work.

[Nicks Pics]

I see you are interested in wildlife photography, I have been pursuing that interest as well over the past year and still don't have many GREAT images. Distance is certainly a big problem. You can find animals easily enough, but distance not being close enough for a decent shot is the problem. For that reason I still don't have many great images, (and other reasons) so after a lot of trying to find out the background to wildlife photographers' shots, (forums are one useful place for that- when wildlife images are posted you can ask questions, if some info is not already given) my hopes are to spend some time planning my shots,(think about where some animals might be, revisit locations you have seen animals), and waiting for action. Of course, scaring animals is a very possible and likely scenario, many people use blinds, and staying low may also help, (squatting or lying low to the ground. Actually, there are two reasons for that, as many great wildlife images are shot from an animal's-eye-level perspective on purpose.) Of course, many wildlife images come about as snap shots as well, wildlife just pop up here and there when you're not particularly expecting them.

My first, (and still some of my best! ) wildlife images were taken of animals attracted with bird food.

As for shooting modes, if you're talking about the dial on the top of your camera, as others have said, the modes S, A, and M, are what most enthusiasts use. The "sports" mode, is a form of an Auto, just tailored to be more likely well suited for action scenarios. It might work pretty well in many cases, but for optimum control over your images, setting your own settings is the way to go if you know how to do it well- which takes a lot of practice and learning, still learning that myself. You will see on this forum people constantly talking about it- making suggestions about how slightly different settings would have helped in this or that way. There is a lot of easily found material on that.

[JR1]

I have the 70-200 f2.8 and to be perfectly honest it is too short for wildlife

You really need 400 and more, you simply wont get close enough for small animals with a 200mm a lot of the time, but it can be done/ish, this is why people use the 150-500/600s

You don't say if you have a garden, if you do then it is much easier

Set up a camera and fire remotely where you place food



These were all taken in a garden





Know your subject, spread seed, peanut butter etc

[FrankMi]

Hi Adrian, if you want to make best use of the camera's presets, turn to the manual and see if they tell you how the camera is configured for the preset you are interested in, then look up the benefits of those settings for the scene described. If it is not listed in the manual, use the preset, then check the camera's settings to see what ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed it is configuring for you.

As mentioned by others, usually Aperture Priority to control Depth of Field where the shutter speed doesn't make a big difference, OR Shutter Priority where stop-action is more important then Depth of Field works best. Eventually your will want to learn how to control both using Manual Mode but for now one of those two settings will teach you more about how to get a good image than the presets. Hope this helps!

[Manfred M]

Adrian - your lens is too short. I find that a full frame equivilent of 400mm is probably the minimum focal length for acceptable wildlife shots. I'm not a birder, but as birds are generally on the smaller side of the wildlife, so that would exacerbate the focal length issue.

We have two lenses for the Nikons that we use for wildlife; the original 80-400mm Nikkor and the Sigma 150-500mm. We use them on our crop frame and full frame cameras as both are FX lenses.

I think you might want to consider getting a teleconverter to give your lens a bit more reach. That will likely be the least expensive solution. The reports on the new 1.4x are quite good. Optical quality and maximum aperture will drop if you go to either the 1.7x or 2x.

[NorthernFocus]

200mm is definitely not optimal. But it can produce. My first year shooting birds we took a trip to New Zealand and all I had available was a 55-200 VR and a 10mp D200. you can see what I came away with at www.pbase.com/drr1531/nz_birds

Thanks for fixing the URL, Dave