What does that do…?
Me and my shadow
I often meet guests on safari who have just bought a new camera but haven’t had a chance to work out how to use it properly. They couldn’t be bothered to read the manual, they didn’t have time to take any pictures or they were supposed to go on a course, but they were too busy…
Unfortunately, that usually means what should’ve been a wonderfully enjoyable and relaxing safari turns into a week-long exercise in getting to know your camera!
When it comes to your photography, familiarity breeds success. The better you know all the buttons and dials on your camera and lenses, the better your pictures will be.
Opportunities for great wildlife shots often come and go very quickly and unpredictably, so you have to be as ready as you can—and that means being able to dial in the right settings without taking your eye away from the viewfinder.
Here are a few examples of the most important settings and how to practise mastering them.
Default Settings
Inexperienced photographers with a camera in their hands often look like Egyptologists carrying a mysterious relic. They turn it around, looking at it from all angles, or scroll through the menus as if they were indecipherable hieroglyphics!
But it doesn’t have to be like that.
The best way to start is perhaps to sort out your default settings. That means setting up your camera to deal with the most common situations you might come across.
If you’re a wildlife photographer, that probably involves a few key settings. In my case, I have a pair of Sony ⍺1 mirrorless camera bodies. If you want to know exactly how I set them up, you can read my separate blog post. However, these are my main starting points:
Exposure mode: manual with auto ISO
File format: Raw (lossy compressed)
Focus mode: AF-C (or AI servo for Canon users)
Burst mode: H+ (or the highest possible frame rate)
Shutter speed: 1/1000 of a second (for animals), 1/3200 (for birds) or 1/15 (for slow pans)
Aperture: wide open (ie the widest possible aperture, depending on the lens)
White balance: auto
Focus area: zone (if you have a mirrorless camera)
Back button focus: on (ie I still take pictures by pressing the shutter release, but I activate the autofocus with the AF-ON button)
Eye detection: Animal (or bird if you’re shooting birds with a mirrorless camera)
As long as you have a mirrorless camera, you can reproduce all of these yourself, and the only ones that won’t work with a DSLR are the last two.
As well as setting up your camera, you should make sure the controls on your lens are all set to the correct values.
Modern lenses usually have a few buttons on the left side of the barrel. I have a Sony 600mm G Master lens, and it has eight controls there (as well as a multi-function ring and four function buttons):
AF/MF: AF (ie the autofocus is on)
FULL TIME DMF: ON (if I want to be able to switch to Direct Manual Focus or OFF if I want to make sure I don’t change the focus accidentally)
FULL/15m-4.5m/∞-15m: FULL (unless I’m working at the same distance all the time)
FUNCTION PRESET/OFF: OFF (unless I want to use the multi-function ring to go to a preset focus point)
SET: n/a (This is just a button to set the focus point, so it doesn’t have a default setting.)
OPTICAL STEADY SHOT: ON (ie image stabilisation is active)
MODE: 1 (for normal shooting), 2 (for panning) or 3 (for shooting from a moving position on a boat etc)
BEEP: OFF (to avoid spooking the wildlife or annoying my fellow photographers!)
And that’s it! That should give you a good set of default settings for wildlife photography, but it’s always worth switching it up to take special kinds of shots or in difficult lighting conditions.
Customisation
Top plate of Sony ⍺1 camera
One of the big benefits of mirrorless cameras is that they let you customise your shooting workflow much more than DSLRs. DSLRs tend to have manual controls that can’t be reset or changed electronically, such as the Manual/AF switch on my old Nikon D850.
That means it takes much longer to change your settings back to their default values, and it’s easy to forget the manual controls. That can quickly lead to disappointment followed by a bit of a panic!
DSLRs also tend not to have custom presets that let you save a range of exposure and other settings for instant access. This is crucial in wildlife photography as you might easily miss your shot if you can’t dial in the right settings quickly enough.
Like a lot of mirrorless models, the Sony ⍺1 lets you access up to three custom presets on the main exposure dial. You can save all the main settings such as exposure mode, shutter speed and aperture, but there are literally hundreds of options.
I have mine set up for animals, birds and slow pan shots, which makes life very easy. All I need to do to switch between them is turn the main dial one or two clicks clockwise or anticlockwise. That cuts down my response time enormously.
(By the way, you normally have to press a manual lock button to turn the main dial on the ⍺1, but I went to Fixation to get that removed to save time—and the engineer even did it for free!)
As well as custom presets, there are several dedicated custom buttons on the ⍺1, plus various customisable options for the other controls. Again, you can read my article on setting up the ⍺1 to find out exactly how I do it. However, the main changes I’ve made let me use two custom buttons near the shutter release to toggle between the different options for focus area (zone and expanded spot) and subject detection (animal and bird).
This is again a real time-saver—although it would be nice if the EVF actually showed you which subject detection mode you were in! (Come on, Sony. Put that in your next firmware update…)
Customisation might sound complicated, but it’s relatively easy to do—at least in the ⍺1’s menu system. It’s also worth mentioning that these values aren’t set in stone. If you find your custom presets aren’t working for some reason, you can always change the shutter speed or aperture, say, and overwrite the old values.
Making Changes on the Fly
Whatever your default settings, there are bound to be occasions when they won’t work properly. That might be because of difficult lighting or because you want to take a special kind of shot that needs a radical change to your settings.
Whatever the reason, you need to be able to make the required changes without taking your eye away from the viewfinder. This is crucial as it saves a LOT of time. As soon as you put your camera down to find the right control or hunt through the menu system, you add crucial seconds to your response time.
Exposure Mode
Most enthusiasts and professional photographers use some combination of manual mode and aperture or shutter priority, depending on the circumstances. Being able to switch quickly between exposure modes is crucial if you want to take a different kind of shot, and I used to get very frustrated with my D850 and D810.
If I was taking portraits and an animal suddenly started to move, it was very time-consuming to switch to my slow pan settings. That’s because I had to change the exposure mode to shutter priority, dial in the lowest possible ISO value (32 on the D850) and drop my shutter speed dramatically (from around 1/1000 of a second or more to around 1/8).
I couldn’t possibly do all that while keeping my eye to the viewfinder, and even if I reserved one of my camera bodies for action shots and one for portraits, there was no guarantee I’d have the right lens on the right camera. I didn’t have two of everything, after all!
Life’s much easier with my Sony ⍺1 cameras, and all I need to do for a slow pan is to turn the main dial to 3. That’s it! If I’m not happy with the default shutter speed, I can always change that later using the rear dial.
Practice
If you have a DSLR, there’s probably no easy way to switch from portrait settings to action settings. The exposure mode can only be changed by turning the main dial, and even then you’ll have to change one or two other settings. It’s still worth practising, but, again, the answer is probably to buy yourself a mirrorless camera!
If you have a mirrorless model, the controls should be a lot simpler. Once you’ve saved your custom presets and allocated your custom buttons, switching between portrait and action settings should just involve turning the main dial one or two clicks.
That still needs practice, though—especially if you have a lock button to deal with. If you’re looking through the viewfinder, it’s extremely awkward to press the lock button while turning the main dial.
All you need to do is set yourself a target, such as switching from manual with auto ISO at 1/1000 of a second to shutter priority at 1/8 of a second and the lowest extended ISO setting. See how long it takes you to get there and try and improve that time.
If you have a friend or relative who’s also a photographer, you could turn it into a competition to see who can do it fastest—or maybe that’s just the 10-year-old boy in me talking…!
If you don’t want to use custom presets on your mirrorless camera, that just makes life a bit harder as you have more settings to dial in.
Aperture and Shutter Speed
Changing the aperture and/or shutter speed is the main way you can change the type of shot you take—or compensate for low light levels. As a bare minimum, you should be able to change both settings by touch without having to look at the dials. And that means knowing which way to turn each dial!
Practice
Most decent DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have front and rear dials to control the shutter speed and aperture. However, every camera’s different, so if you’ve bought a new camera recently, you’ll need to spend a bit of time getting used to the new layout.
You can easily become familiar with these controls by setting yourself a challenge (or asking a friend or relative to do it). Just hold your camera with your eye to the viewfinder and see how long it takes you to dial in 1/1000 of a second and f/16, say.
Try not to look—that’s cheating! Just keep changing the values until it comes naturally.
Autofocus
The autofocus settings available are different on DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, mostly because you don’t get focus areas or eye detection on DSLRs. However, it’s worth practising to make sure you find it quick and easy to dial in your most commonly used values.
With my old D850, that involved making sure the manual switch was in autofocus mode, pressing the autofocus button on the left side of the camera body, and dialling in the right settings using both the front and rear dials. What a palaver!
With my new ⍺1, all I need to do is press one button to toggle between different focus areas. I normally only use zone (about a quarter of the frame) and expanded spot (for a smaller area if there are obstructions in the foreground). That means I can simply switch from one to the other with a single press.
Practice
If you have a DSLR, your best option is probably to buy a mirrorless camera! (Sorry, just kidding…). You just need to pick your most commonly used AF options and practise switching between them. Again, just set yourself a challenge and see how quickly you can reach 3D mode on the D850, say.
At first, you might need a stopwatch to time yourself, but, with practice, you should end up being able to change modes in a second or two.
If you have a mirrorless camera, the main variable is the size of the focus area, but you also need to be able to switch between animal and bird eye detection. That’s where custom buttons come in. You don’t need to use the same ones I do, but the autofocus options are important, so the buttons should be easily accessible—preferably using your right index finger or maybe your left thumb.
There are other options on the ⍺1 such as being able to turn off Eye AF or switch between the right and left eye, but I don’t find those terribly useful.
Exposure Compensation
Exposure compensation dial on a Sony camera
One of the best ways to make your photos stand out is to underexpose or overexpose them dramatically. If you use shutter or aperture priority or auto ISO, the easiest way to do this is with exposure compensation.
My Sony ⍺1 camera bodies have a dedicated exposure compensation dial and a WYSIWYG EVF that make it easy to brighten or darken the images to taste while looking through the viewfinder or using the rear LCD.
Unfortunately, the dial only goes from +3 EV to -3 EV, so if you want to change the exposure by more than that, you have to switch to manual ISO.
Practice
Whatever type of camera you have, you can easily practise using exposure compensation by challenging yourself to go from zero (normal exposure) to -3 EV (very underexposed) to +3 EV (very overexposed), say, as quickly as possible.
DSLRs have optical viewfinders, so you’ll have to take test shots to see if you’ve got the exposure right. However, digital photography is free, so that won’t cost you anything!
If your camera doesn’t have a dedicated exposure compensation dial, you’ll just have to find the right combination of buttons and dials and practise with those. On the D850, for example, you have to hold down the +/- button and turn the rear command dial.
Verdict
Not knowing how your camera works can be the source of enormous frustration and disappointment. Guests on safari often ask me questions about their cameras, and they almost always start with “How do you…?”
If you want to avoid all the heartache, it’s worth familiarising yourself with your equipment. Make sure you have a good set of default camera settings and take advantage of any custom options there are to tweak them to your liking.
It’ll save you a lot of time, and that might just be the difference between getting the money shot and coming home empty-handed…
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