River

[lovelife65]

Throw the stick human.
(light getting low, not a great background).
River is our intense momma (2 and a half years old now... still a pup). Great dog. Needs minor management LOL.
(I updated the photo, my monitor calibration is way off and I'm not doing well at getting the photos done correctly).

River by sharonkay finley, on Flickr

[xpatUSA]

Nice one, Sharon. lots of attitude ...

[pschlute]

No matter how many fancy toys you buy them, a stick captures their imagination every time.

[lovelife65]

No matter how many fancy toys you buy them, a stick captures their imagination every time.

She's insane in regards to her stick/ball/sock OCD.
At night, we have to hide things or she will not stop throwing it at us

[lovelife65]

Nice one, Sharon. lots of attitude ...

Thank you
She does not lack attitude. She takes a little bit of management from time to time LOL.
But, I tell her she's my wife.

[pschlute]

At night, we have to hide things or she will not stop throwing it at us

At night Rio likes to be surrounded by his toy ducks. If I get up in the night for a bathroom visit, I inevitably stand on one. The resultant squeak is followed by Rio barking, then his brother joins in.

Then it is me in the dog house from my partner !

[lovelife65]

At night Rio likes to be surrounded by his toy ducks. If I get up in the night for a bathroom visit, I inevitably stand on one. The resultant squeak is followed by Rio barking, then his brother joins in.

Then it is me in the dog house from my partner !

LOL. Super cute. Maybe the dogs will follow and keep you company

[selig1656]

Lovely dog, the capture seems to be missing a some pop and a little out of focus .

[lovelife65]

Lovely dog, the capture seems to be missing a some pop and a little out of focus .

You are correct in regards to focus. These labs do not sit still.... ever ... lol
Thank you for commenting it’s appreciated. She is lovely and quite a handful.

[Dave Humphries]

Nice capture Sharon,

If mine, I'd try cropping some off both top and bottom of frame to remove some distractions while maintaining the balance of composition.

KR, Dave

[rpcrowe]

Sharon - you might try (rent or borrow) a camera/lens combination that has "animal eye auto focus" capability... The first camera that I know of that had this capability was the Sony A6400. Later the A6600 was also capable of Animal Eye AF and then the A7iii firmware update included this capability.

Lately, Animal Eye AF has not been restricted to those cameras, all recent Sony mirrorless cameras also have that capability even the entry A6100, and I think we find Animal Eye AF in some Canon, Fuji and Nikon mirrorless offerings...

I first began using mirrorless cameras (Sony) to take advantage of their Human Eye AF (before Animal Eye AF was even thought of). The when Sony introduced the A6400 which has Animal Eye AF, I tried it and it and found that is great for both posed portraits and action shots of animals. Catching a dog's eye or eyes in focus is difficult with most AF systems because they tend to focus on what is closest to the lens - than tends to be the dogs nose.

The great thing about Animal Eye AF is that you can devote your energy to good composition and not have to worry about focus. The more lively the dog, IMO the more valuable is the Animal Eye AF...



I shot this using a Sony A6400 with the Sony 70-200mm f/4 lens at 74mm (110mm equivalent) with an f/5.6 aperture.

However, my favorite camera/lens combination for dog photos (both portrait and action) is a Sony APSC body (with Animal Eye AF) and the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens...

Sure you can get well focused images without Animal Eye AF (photographers have done this for many-many years) however, it is a lot easier to capture dog and cat images using this capability...

There is some danger in trying a camera with Animal Eye AF - you just might fall in love with it

[lovelife65]

Nice capture Sharon,

If mine, I'd try cropping some off both top and bottom of frame to remove some distractions while maintaining the balance of composition.

KR, Dave

Thank you Dave, I really appreciate your suggestions. I really want to learn how to capture them better. They are such amazing dogs, I want to remember them forever.

[lovelife65]

Sharon - you might try (rent or borrow) a camera/lens combination that has "animal eye auto focus" capability... The first camera that I know of that had this capability was the Sony A6400. Later the A6600 was also capable of Animal Eye AF and then the A7iii firmware update included this capability.

Lately, Animal Eye AF has not been restricted to those cameras, all recent Sony mirrorless cameras also have that capability even the entry A6100, and I think we find Animal Eye AF in some Canon, Fuji and Nikon mirrorless offerings...

I first began using mirrorless cameras (Sony) to take advantage of their Human Eye AF (before Animal Eye AF was even thought of). The when Sony introduced the A6400 which has Animal Eye AF, I tried it and it and found that is great for both posed portraits and action shots of animals. Catching a dog's eye or eyes in focus is difficult with most AF systems because they tend to focus on what is closest to the lens - than tends to be the dogs nose.

The great thing about Animal Eye AF is that you can devote your energy to good composition and not have to worry about focus. The more lively the dog, IMO the more valuable is the Animal Eye AF...



I shot this using a Sony A6400 with the Sony 70-200mm f/4 lens at 74mm (110mm equivalent) with an f/5.6 aperture.

However, my favorite camera/lens combination for dog photos (both portrait and action) is a Sony APSC body (with Animal Eye AF) and the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens...

Sure you can get well focused images without Animal Eye AF (photographers have done this for many-many years) however, it is a lot easier to capture dog and cat images using this capability...

There is some danger in trying a camera with Animal Eye AF - you just might fall in love with it

Wonderful photo, and suggestions Richard. I may have to poke around and see what I can find. I currently use the Fuji x-pro2 which is a good camera, but there are some things I don't do well with it. I may just peek around, since I love capturing these creatures, and their eyes tell so much.

edit: I see Canon and Nikon have cameras with this capability. I have an old Nikon Film camera (The F4) and absolutely LOVE it. Will investigate further.

[rpcrowe]

I did some research on the Fuji line of cameras and, apparently (while they are excellent cameras) they do not (yet) offer animal eye AF... It appears that this is also a feature only of later mirrorless cameras from Sony, Canon or Nikon.

This is not a prerequisite for shooting animals. I have only been using it since the firmware upgrade for the Sony A6400 and later a firmware update for the Sony A7iii introduced it. It was only about 18-months ago or so.

I was highly skeptical regarding this feature but, it works flawlessly and is really fun to use; obviously only with lenses that incorporate auto focus. I now use the LCD to frame my portraits of dogs. The articulating LCD screen allows me to get the camera down to the animal's eye level and the Animal Eye AF ensures that the focus on the dog will be correct...

However it is amazing when I point my camera at a dog using wide area continuous AF and a small green box appears around the eye to indicate that the camera is focused on that eye. Prior to shooting, you do have to choose whether you want Eye-AF to activate and then choose if you will shooting a human or an animal.

The Animal Eye AF appears to work best when there is some difference in brightness or coloring between the eyes of the animal and the animals coat. In other words, it doesn't seem to work all that well if you are shooting a black dog that has very dark eyes especially deeply recessed eyes. Tony Northrup stated that he did not like Animal Eye AF for pictures of his dog. Well, his little dog has a black face and very dark eyes which doesn't allow the camera to lock on they way it does when there is a color or brightness difference between the dog's coat and its eyes..

Sony says that the animal eye AF is best for dogs and cats but, I have found that it works pretty well on most mammals. Strangely, then I shot gorillas at the zoo, the autofocus worked best when I had "human" rather than animal AF selected.

[lovelife65]

I did some research on the Fuji line of cameras and, apparently (while they are excellent cameras) they do not (yet) offer animal eye AF... It appears that this is also a feature only of later mirrorless cameras.

There was a big discussion on fuji x forums about this topic. Some even said... if Fuji won't get on board with it like the big 3, maybe it's time to switch .
Mostly I just probably need to learn my camera a little better. There is face and eye detection for humans, wonder what that would buy me. I'd like to try to get better eye focus, because I think that can make or break a photo. Overall, I just need to keep on practicing and advancing my skills. Thanks for all the really good info!!

[rpcrowe]

I first used face detect focus with my Canon 6D Mark-2... It worked quite well. The camera did not offer Eye-AF but, the eyes were in focus most of the time... Even when using an 85mm f/1.8 lens wide open...

The problem with the 6D2 was that face AF could only be used in live-view mode and I have problems using live view in bright sunlight. I tried solving the problem by adding an accessory viewfinder but, that made the package quite unwieldy because of the size added to the camera and lens...

I found a used Sony A6500 and a good price on eBay with a Sigma MC-11 adapter to convert my Canon glass to the Sony mirrorless body. As I began shooting with the adapted Sony glass, I decided to try a native e-mount Sony lens...

The rest of the story is that I liked the Sony gear so much that I sold all of my Canon gear and transferred my allegiance to Sony...

Sony users have been fortunate that we now have a plethora of 3rd party lenses for our mirrorless cameras. This was not the case early on with my Sony system.

[MrB]

Lovely dog, Sharon. As a title, 'River' is meaningful only to those who know her. Instead, what about using the quote from your first post - 'Throw the stick, human'? Then perhaps follow Dave's advice to crop some off the base, but leave the stick at the top and clone out the windows and the pipe.

All the best.
Philip

[lovelife65]

Lovely dog, Sharon. As a title, 'River' is meaningful only to those who know her. Instead, what about using the quote from your first post - 'Throw the stick, human'? Then perhaps follow Dave's advice to crop some off the base, but leave the stick at the top and clone out the windows and the pipe.

All the best.
Philip

Great advice Philip (yes, titling it "River" can be a bit misleading, as one could be expecting a true River LOL).
I love the edit, it's much improved. Did you do it in PowerPoint? Lightroom leaves something to be desired, so I must learn more editing skills.

[MrB]

Great advice Philip (yes, titling it "River" can be a bit misleading, as one could be expecting a true River LOL).
I love the edit, it's much improved. Did you do it in PowerPoint? Lightroom leaves something to be desired, so I must learn more editing skills.

You're right Sharon - before I selected your first post I was expecting a river scene!!
For editing I used the PaintShop Pro Clone Tool, then applied some selective sharpening with Unsharp Mask, and used White Balance to shift the whole image a bit towards the cooler tones.

Cheers.
Philip