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Let's talk dog pictures

70K views 318 replies 67 participants last post by  fredzeff 
#1 ·
Just got a new Canon Rebel t3i and wanting to be able to use it while hunting and training the dogs. I am looking at getting a telephoto lens, but will be far in the future before I can do that more than likely. What are some tips to help a newbie to the canine and wildlife photography world out. Tips, tricks, settings, or cheap camera accessories to help me improve.
 
#76 ·
If you are looking for a tripod for video, first be sure that you get a liquid dampened video head. Be sure that the tripod is tall enough without extending the center column, as an extended center column will increase the likelihood of vibrations; then get a sandbag and hang it from the center of the tripod. The inertia of the sandbag will help cut down on the vibrations a lot.
 
#77 ·
Wayne - My photography teacher suggested Photoshop Elements to her students, but I went with Lightroom anyways. As for tripods, I am new to photography, but I feel like the few pieces of photography equipment that last is good glass and good tripods. Bodies wear out, but if you get a good tripod now it will save you from purchasing again later, like you are experiencing now. Manfrotto and Gitzo are good brands, I have a Oben legs and head. I don't know anything about video heads. I coughed up the extra money for carbon fiber because I wanted the weight savings.

Todd - There is no substitute for nailing it in the field. Do you post process with photoshop, lightroom, etc?
 
#80 ·
Todd - There is no substitute for nailing it in the field. Do you post process with photoshop, lightroom, etc?
I just use photoshop and little as possible, I use it alot for designing adds, thank you cards, banners, montages ect. but try really hard to get correct right out of the camera. If I go and shoot an event the last thing I want to do when I get home is try to fix 500 plus images.

And Hugh just scored a nice pair of Hawke Binoculars last week from a photo contest no post processing or cropping..
 
#81 ·
Who were the judges?
 
#83 ·
Wayne, one of the primary differences between Lightroom and Photoshop is that Lightroom is based on a data base that, when set up correctly, will keep your images organized and easily accessible. Photoshop is NOT designed to organize or manage your images. It is essentially a graphic arts program that allows you to optimize your images, but in no way keeps track of them. Also, changes made within photoshop are, for lack of a better term, permanent, whereas corrections in Lightroom are what are known as non-destructive, meaning that you can always go back to the original image. Essentially, lightroom simply "takes notes" of the changes you make and puts them in a file attached to the image file without actually changing the original image file. When the image is displayed or printed the instructions are applied in a non-permanent fashion.
 
#89 · (Edited)
If yoiu are shooting RAW, fixing the white balance is no problem if you just had it set wrong on the camera. Canon's proprietary software lets you just go in and reset the white balance to what it should have been. Yes, if I am submitting to have published, I also use un-adjusted images and I wish that the primary contest in which I participate would judge the RAW files, but they want the photographers to "optimize" the images. Here are several images that are exactly as they came out of the camera, no cropping, no color adjustment, no anything except converting to jpeg and adding the watermark:









 
#94 · (Edited)

So this is a before and after comparison in lightroom. To me, the picture right out of the camera has no color and is boring, unlike the one's yall are posting. The colors in the after photo are a little strong, probably from me sligthly messing with saturation. What could I have done to get a better picture out of the camera? Does it have to do with my lighting (alternating from harsh sun to cloud cover), WB, or maybe metering? I am still learning metering, and I think I metered off the bright green grass while sun was shining on it. I was trying to shoot when the sun was behind some clouds.
 
#95 ·
Personally, I have no problem with what you did to optimize your images. I especially liked the honey bee and the chicken, but lighting and exposure are key in having an image that is good right out of the camera. For the photos I posted, I got to choose what time of day and where the sun was relative to my subjects. Fortuitously, most wildlife is active around the time of day that often provides the most pleasing light (frequently within 90 mins or so of sunrise and sunset). You will notice that there is no sky in any of the photos I posted. It is very difficult to get a good exposure of the sky and of your foreground subject. Usually, if I am going to have sky in the background, I will be using fill flash on my primary subject to balance the exposure.
 
#96 ·
Jack, you can tweak your "in camera" Picture Control Settings to add a little more out of camera "pop". Go to Shooting Menu>Set Picture Control. Most RAW shooters will shoot with a Neutral setting, and adjust in post. For high volume jpeg work, you can boost your settings to make a nicer jpeg that may be perfectly fine out of camera, assuming you have done your part with exposure and camera setup.

I still use Nikon Capture NX2 as my RAW converter. You can adjust the Nikon Picture Control Setting to see what the differences are. FYI, I typically shoot a Neutral Setting, Sharpening 7, Contrast +2, Brightness -, Saturation +1, Hue 0. Typically gives me a good starting point for images I may want to work with, or in some cases, an images that needs nothing.

Nice job with your Golden! Great initial comp/exposure, and nice post work, that really makes a nice finished image.
 
#98 ·
You need to remember that if you are shooting RAW (which I do for anything that is really important), your in camera settings (other than exposure) have no actual effect. If you shoot in RAW it is much easier to tweek images in Post. You can fine tune white balance and so on much better if your original capture is RAW.
 
#97 ·
Hmm, the one on the left is the way things actually look to me.
 
#103 ·
Looks very nice. I have just started with LR. Used Aperture for years, but Apple has thrown in the towel on it so switched to CC. What it the HSL tab?
 
#104 ·
Hugh - It is where you access the hue, saturation, and luminance settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi1-8qYHWaQ

I've watched the first 3 videos of his in this series and it helped immensely in actually developing the photos. The two hour video you recommended watching before ever importing photos was crucial in starting off correctly, but he never talked about developing, so I found these.
 
#105 ·
Hugh - It is where you access the hue, saturation, and luminance settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi1-8qYHWaQ

I've watched the first 3 videos of his in this series and it helped immensely in actually developing the photos. The two hour video you recommended watching before ever importing photos was crucial in starting off correctly, but he never talked about developing, so I found these.
Tim Grey has lots of tutorials for both LR and PS and puts out a daily letter where he answers a question on one or the other. Google "Ask Tim Grey". I believe that he is Adobe certified.
 
#106 ·
Got my new lens today, had very little time to play with it, very harsh light and we are very brown here at this point so very little color, but it does seem sharp and very fast AF.. I have had the 300mm F/4 IS and i believe I had a bad copy, soft and slow AF, and have had 2 used copies of the 100-400 vs. I, and after one hour with this lens it blows both of them out of the water so far.





 
#111 ·
#108 ·
I have never owned the 100-400 but have used it on at least two occasions and really did not like it. I don't particularly like lenses in which wide open varies across the zoom range and I didn't like the slide zoom feature, shifted the COG too much when zoomed back and forth. I have been hearing good things about the MkII though. Really wish I could visit your waterhole. Those are some cool waterfowl shots!!
 
#109 ·
Thanks,it's my back yard, but I think were going to get screwed this year on spring waterfowl way to early of a spring, way to much open water, really not complaining because we have had snow free training for the past two monthes so my dogs are way ahead of there normal "winter" training, but I really look forward to the spring migration and I believe we are going to miss most of it.

I really hope this lens works out, I know of a couple full time photographers that have sold off there 300 2.8's and are using it with there 1.4X and 2.0X III's and getting the same results, both have had the original 100-400 and they agree the two lens are night and day with AF and IQ.. But I kinda liked the old push pull..
 
#114 ·
thank you!
 
#119 ·
How do you post pictures? From windows photo gallery.
 
#121 ·
View attachment 22822

Here is Hattie-4 months old at the time. Now 3 years old and will be running first Masters test next month. Taken with Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR and Nikon D300.
I want to learn how to take pictures that look this good! Cool action shot!
 
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