Wildlife Photography
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
Of all the things there are to photograph I find animals, birds and insects the most satisfying and the most difficult. They almost never do what you want them to and are most likely to do whatever you least expect. The best way to photograph animals is in the wild.
Manual Focus
When photographing animals you need a lot of patience, they either do nothing for long periods of time or they are so hyperactive that you can't keep them in the viewfinder. What you need to do is study the animal for a while and try to predict their next move. Birds will often follow a definite flight path so, if you can work out what it is, you can just wait until they fly past a certain point. I usually switch to manual focus when photographing birds as the auto focus can often end up trying to focus on the empty sky.
Long Lens
Animals, especially in the wild do not let you get very close to them so an essential piece of kit for photographing animals is a long lens preferably a zoom. I use a 75-300mm zoom and, more often than not, I end up using it at the 300mm end. Ideally I would like a 500mm lens but good ones cost quite a lot of money and you really need to use it on a tripod. The general rule of thumb for handholding without camera shake is to use a shutter speed greater than 1 divided by the focal length of the lens. So a 500mm lens should be used at shutter speeds greater than 1/500th of a second. With this in mind it's also a good idea to choose clothing that will help you blend in with your surroundings.
Labels: AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G, Animal, Nikon D50, Photography
