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Since the invention of photography photographers have been trying to find ways to successfully photograph high contrast scenes. In landscape photography graduated neutral density filters are commonly used to darken bright skies, and polarizers are used to eliminate reflections and bright spots. Now it is vogue to bracket several exposures and create HDR images or even manually composite several exposures in Photoshop. All of these techniques work great for shooting landscapes and other still subjects but we can seldom apply them to wildlife photography. Our skittish subjects will rarely stay still enough to shoot several bracketed exposures and graduated filters would usually be impractical for animal portraits. Luckily there are several techniques we can apply in camera and in post to help save our high contrast shots.
Fill flash is an amazing way to remove harsh shadows. Setting your flash -1 or whatever compensation that will add detail into the shadow areas of the subject is incredibly beneficial. Fill flash means you use flash but the flash is not the main light source. So if you photograph a bird, the natural light will light the bird but the fill flash will brighten the shadows as in the above image taken back in December. If done right the average person shouldn’t be able to tell you used flash. Using the flash as your main light can look unnatural in outdoor shots. When using fill flash it also adds the reflection of the flash in the subject’s eyes – this is called a catch light – and helps draw the viewers attention to the eye’s of the subject. Fill flash works great for portraits or even adding a little more emphasis on foreground elements in landscape images.
Sadly fill flash won’t work in all scenarios. The shutter speed may be too quick for the flash to sync or the burst of light may startle the animal being photographed. In these cases we can fix some of the issues in post. Using the Fill Light and Recovery tools in Adobe Camera RAW can help lower contrast or even give your images a look which resembles HDR. Fill light lightens only the darks and Recovery darkens only the lights. Adjusting the Fill Light slider to much can add unwanted noise especially in underexposed and high ISO images. It’s better to darken the image to obtain the final result than to lighten it especially if the image was shot at a high ISO. I try to avoid using the Fill Light slider extensively if I’m shooting above ISO 400 with my Nikon D200. Adjusting the Fill Light and Recovery can add detail to darks and darken brighter distracting parts of the image allowing you to better control the images contrast. If these effects are applied heavily then the image can sometimes look like a hyper real HDR image. I like to use this effect on a variety of subjects including portraits and wildlife to showcase the maximum amount of detail in the subject. This hyper real effect can be added to lower contrast shots like this cat lying in the shade to give the image some extra pop. I usually use a technique called exposing to the right so I can obtain detail in the darker parts of the image so I can increase the Fill Light to get this hyper real look without a noticeable increase in noise. I’ll write more about exposing to the right in one of my next posts.
High contrast scenes will always be difficult to shoot, but by using a combination of fill flash and editing we can still get great images.
– Ryan Watkins
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I recently got my Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 back from being repaired from a local camera store and had some great opportunities to use it. My 70-300 is usually on my camera when I’m outdoors in-case I see any distant wildlife. While going out on my parent’s property in mid-Michigan, my friend and I encountered this playful deer. It let me get relatively close to it before it scampered off. We encountered it again in the same spot later on that day but the brush prevented me from getting an image of it. I had to shoot wide open and at a higher ISO than I usually like to obtain a quick enough shutter speed to keep the image sharp. If you’re using a 300mm lens you don’t want to use a shutter speed slower than 1/300s of a second if you’re shooting handheld. If you’re using a 50mm lens try not to shoot with a shutter speed slower than 1/50 of a second; if you’re using a 105mm lens 1/105s of a second and so on. You’ll have to set a combination of shutter speed and aperture to obtain a quick enough shutter speed. I prefer to keep the ISO lower and my aperture at f/8 – which is my lenses sharpest aperture – but there are times when wider apertures and higher ISOs are needed to prevent blur in a shot. Most lenses are sharpest a stop narrower than wide open so if the light is good enough you don’t need to shoot at your lenses widest aperture. The vibrations reduction on my 70-300 also helped me hand hold the image at even slower shutter speeds. This will help compensate for camera shake but not movement of the animal. Canon has this feature in there IS (image stabilized) lenses – Sigma calls it OS and Tamron VC. Sony and Olympus have this build into the camera. It’s great to have one of my favorite lenses back so I can get back to shooting one of my favorite subjects: wildlife!
Most of us would opt for a telephoto lens for shooting wildlife, but in some instances we can shoot with macro lenses or lenses with other macro accessories. Many of my favorite wildlife images have been obtained of turtles, frogs, bees, and other insects shot with my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 Lens with several Kenko close-up filters. For those who enjoy shooting macros dedicated macro lenses come in a wide variety of focal lengths and price ranges. For those of us who shoot the occasional macro or want to have their macro lenses focus even closer there are a variety of accessories which allow our lenses to focus even closer. Extension tubes are a common accessory used for macros. They fit in-between your lens and camera body allowing closer focusing, but you have some light loss when using these. Since there is no glass in them image quality won’t suffer if several are stacked on top of each other. I use close-up filters. These attach to the front of your camera lens like any other filter. There is no light loss like when using extension tubes, but if you stack several on top of each other there can be loss of image quality. You are also limited to only being able to use these on lenses with the same size filter thread. There are other ways to get your images to focus closer like bellows and reverse mounting lenses but these are less common. For people who love to shoot macros, purchasing a dedicated macro lens is definitely worth it. Using macro accessories on your existing lenses can be more affordable and you can get some amazing results as well.
