Just Keep Snapping! [Photo Tips]

One of the best parts of doggie photos is when you capture a great expression. I was so pleased to have caught Moab with his tongue sticking out like this. It looks to me like he is saying Spllltttthhhhh!

I have found that the secret is high-speed continuous shooting. If you snap a bazillion pictures, one is bound to turn out! I use high-speed continuous shooting plus AI-Servo mode. When I am out in this kind of an environment, with dogs and camera, I keep that shutter button down. You just never know when your animal is going to do something cute, funny or just interesting. We were at this location, at the foot of the Blue Lakes trail head near Ridgeway, Co, for only about 45 minutes, but I probably took 300 photos. Using Lightroom it is easy to flag the blurry/uninteresting/otherwise lame photos as rejects and delete them. Gotta love digital!

- Rod

Rod Simpson Photography

Snow in the San Juans! [Trip Reports]

We had a great time down in the San Juan Mountains over thanksgiving!  There was still plenty of snow on the ground even though it had not snowed for several days.  We spent some time around Telluride and up on Wilson's Mesa, but had a great time taking dog photos at the Blue Lakes trail head off of route 7.  Moab and Rio were loving the snow and I was able to get some great portrait and action photos.  My technique for auto-ISO worked great, but I realized after examining my photos that playing doggies really need a much faster shutter speed (at least 1/500, or 1/1000).  Most of my action shots were just not quite crisp enough...learning every day!

- Rod

Rod Simpson Photography

Camera presets for animals in action [Photo Tips]

So here is the problem:  You are driving or hiking along, and you see a critter that really wants to have its picture taken.  Unfortunately, you have all the knobs and dials on your camera set for the landscape picture you just took a little earlier.  You quickly try to switch to TV mode and make adjustments, or worse... you go straight for Program mode.  Eeek!  And of course by the time you have everything all set, the moment has passed and the animal has left the building.  So what to do?

Well, if you have a camera like mine, you can use the "Action" preset (the icon is of a running man). But if you have a higher end camera like a 5D or 5D mark II, then you will want to go with the custom settings.  On my camera (Canon 50D), they are called called C1 and C2 and can be found on the mode dial (the big one on the top).  My wife's 5D and 5D mark II have the same features.  Basically what you do is adjust all the knobs and dials just the way you want (mode, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, etc), and then you store these settings under the custom function (C1 or C2).  Refer to your manual for how to do this on your specific camera.  Then, all you have to do is turn the dial back to the custom function and it will restore all the settings.

So great, but what settings should I use?  Well, what I do is I have one set for animals, and the other set for landscape (the landscape one is not just for convience either - I have had more than one sunset shots I had to rush to get!).  For my animal setting, I originally went with TV mode, ISO 400, and a shutter speed of 1/250.  My main goal was to "freeze" the action, and capture a crisp shot of the animal.  I went with ISO 400 because it seems like I usually see animals in lower light conditions, and I wanted to have a larger F-stop for better depth of field.  With TV (time-value) mode, your shutter speed is fixed, and the camera will automatically vary the F-stop as needed to ensure a proper exposure.

Well, this has worked pretty well, but a week or so ago, I was telling my wife that I knew that I wanted a shutter speed of 1/500 and an F-stop of F8.  So she suggested that I use AUTO ISO and set it to manual mode.  Thus, instead of having the F-stop be the variable that the camera controls, I fix the F-stop and the Shutter speed  Here are the final settings:

Custom function C1 (for wildlife):
Shooting Mode: Manual
Shutter speed: 1/500
F-stop: F8
ISO: AUTO
Other settings:
Focus: AI-SERVO
Drive Mode: High Speed Continuous
White Balance: Auto (this can be easily corrected in camera RAW).
Disable Mirror Lockup

Custom function C1 (for landscape):
Shooting Mode: AV (aperture value)
Shutter speed: N/A - Controlled by the camera
F-stop: F16
ISO: 100
Other settings:
Focus: ONE SHOT
Drive Mode: Single Shot
White Balance: Cloudy (I find I am shooting landscape more than 50% of the time in cloudy conditions)
Disable Mirror Lockup (If I am not in a hurry, I will turn it on - I added it to the shortcut menu for easy access)

I have tried this combination out several times with great success.  By switching to auto ISO and fixing the two other values (F-stop and Shutter Speed), I know I will freeze the action with a depth of field that I am comfortable with.  Also, because the camera is on manual mode, I can quickly adjust either shutter speed or F-stop if needed for the conditions.  And the best part is that with one twist of the dial I am ready to go.  Now if I could just figure out how to change lenses this fast I would be all set!

Hope this helps you... if it does, or if you have a different idea, let me know!

- Rod

Rod Simpson Photography

Rocky Mountain National Park [Trip Reports]

Mary and I enjoyed another great excursion to Rocky Mountain National Park yesterday.  The weather was frigid and we were hoping for some evening shots at Bear Lake.  But by the time we got to to the lake it was blowing about 30 knots and the snow was flying all around.  We hiked up to Emerald lake to check things out, and although it was beautiful, no photo ops.  We did make the obligatory stop at a nice herd of elk and got some shots.   Mary was trying out a 2x tele-extender.  I was just using the 70-200mm (which was fine since the elk were right next to the road).  All in all, a nice little break!

- Rod

Rod Simpson Photography