“Whoops! Too late…”

How long does it take you to get ready to photograph something? If it’s more than two seconds, you might miss your chance.

The ‘two-second rule’ is a way of crystallising the importance of being ready at all times. Birds fly away, animals turn their backs, and some idiot in your vehicle might drop something and scare off all the wildlife!

So what can you do to make sure you don’t miss those fleeting opportunities for great photographs? Here are a few ideas on equipment, settings, customisation and technique.

Equipment

It’s often said that the best camera for wildlife photography is the one you have with you. That means there’s certainly an argument for convenience and portability. Why bother with an incredibly heavy and bulky DSLR with a long lens when you always have a smartphone in your pocket or handbag?

Well, there’s obviously more to it than that. If your ambition extends beyond simple snapshots, you’ll need to consider image quality and features in your choice of equipment. Most professional wildlife photographers use full-frame cameras and long lenses with a focal length of 400mm, 600mm or even 800mm.

However, the main point is readiness—the ability to take a shot of a leaping impala or a bird in flight with less than two seconds’ notice. You just have to ask yourself whether your kit allows you to do that or not.

Presets

I recently switched from Nikon DSLRs to Sony mirrorless cameras, and one of the reasons I did so was the ability to choose from three exposure presets on the main dial. The problem with my D850 was that there were too many things I needed to do in order to change from one type of shot to another.

Suppose I was happily taking portraits of a lion cub in a tree when two other cubs started chasing each other nearby. If I wanted to access my slow pan settings, I’d have to make changes using three different controls:

• Turn the main dial from manual to shutter priority mode.

• Press the ISO button and turn the control dial to select the lowest extended ISO value of 32.

• Turn the rear control dial to choose a suitably slow shutter speed.

That was impossible to do with my eye to the viewfinder, and it would certainly take longer than two seconds!

However, my Sony ⍺1 cameras let me save exposure presets on the main dial that contain all the right settings for each different type of shot. That means I simply have to turn the dial to the new preset. My three defaults are as follows:

• 1: Animals

  • Manual mode with auto ISO

  • 1/1000 of a second

  • f/2.8 or f/4 (depending on the maximum aperture of the lens)

  • Animal eye detection

• 2: Birds

  • Manual mode with auto ISO

  • 1/3200 of a second

  • f/2.8 or f/4 (depending on the maximum aperture of the lens)

  • Bird eye detection

• 3: Slow pan

  • Shutter priority mode at 50 ISO

  • ~1/15 of a second

  • Animal eye detection

I don’t need to worry about the exposure mode, the ISO or the shutter speed any more. All those values are saved, so the camera will select them automatically. I still have the option to tweak them, obviously, but it means my chances of slow-panning those lion cubs have just gone up dramatically!

Customisation

One of the other great time-saving features of Sony cameras in general and the ⍺1 in particular is the number of customisation options. There are several different custom buttons and dials on the camera bodies, and they can generally be programmed to control almost any feature.

You can see my full Sony ⍺1 set-up in this blog post, but the main custom buttons I rely on are C1 and C2, which I use to toggle between focus areas and subject detection modes.

Focus Areas

Mirrorless cameras generally have wide, zone and expanded spot focusing areas (plus a few variations). I find I use the zone and expanded spot areas the most, so I’ve disabled all the other ones so that I can simply toggle between those two.

The zone focus area takes up around a quarter of the screen, and this helps the camera to identify the subject a bit more quickly than if it had to check the whole frame using the wide mode.

The expanded spot focus uses a single focus point, but that point is surrounded by eight others on all sides that the camera uses in case it can no longer focus on the subject.

Subject Identification

Although the ⍺1 has probably the best AF system for wildlife photography, one annoyance is that you have to tell it what kind of subject you’re photographing. That means switching fairly often between animal and bird eye detection.

Unfortunately, the EVF doesn’t show which subject mode you’re using at any given time, so you have to press the custom button once or twice to make sure you’ve got it right!

That’s certainly something I hope they fix in a future firmware update…

Settings

Whatever type of camera you have, you can save yourself time by making sure your default settings are good enough for action shots. Portraits generally give you time to pick and choose, but you need to have the right values dialled in if you suddenly see a leopard jumping down from a tree!

I generally shoot wide open (ie at the lens’s widest aperture), and my default shutter speed is 1/1000 of a second (or 1/3200 for birds). Those values still let me take portraits, but they’re high enough that I won’t get many problems with motion blur if I have to photograph a moving subject in a rush.

I go to Africa once or twice a year, and that means going on a lot of game drives and boat rides. If I’m on a game drive, I’ll choose my ‘animals’ preset. If I’m on a boat ride, I’ll choose my ‘birds’ preset.

However, I also like to start off any early morning game drive by trying to take silhouettes of animals on the horizon. If I’m doing that, I’ll generally switch to a different group of settings.

If the sun is above the horizon and the sky is bright, you won’t have a problem with the light level, so you can dial in your lowest native ISO (usually 64 or 100). However, choosing the ISO manually means you need some way of letting the camera control the exposure.

The best way of doing that is to go into aperture priority mode. The aperture is generally more important than the shutter speed for silhouettes because you often need to make sure both your subject and the sky and sun are acceptably sharp. That means selecting a narrow aperture of around f/16. You don’t care about the shutter speed (within reason!) because your subjects won’t be moving much.

The point is that if you know what type you’re going to take, you can change your default settings to match. You’re not locked in to all your defaults. That saves time and allows you to react to fleeting photo opportunities.

Technique

I often see guests on safari who keep the lens cap on their cameras even when they’re on a game drive. That’s crazy! How can you expect to take a shot in a hurry if you have to remove the lens cap first?

This is just one example of how your camera technique and behaviour can help you save time. Here are a few tips for enjoying a successful game drive:

• Take a camera bag with everything you’ll need—just in case you need to change lenses etc.

• Check your settings beforehand.

• Sit in the row behind the driver on the opposite side.

• Put your camera bag in between the seats (or on top of the fridge).

• Hold your camera in your hands as you drive around—just in case!

• Look for game on both sides—especially in trees or on termite mounds.

• Make sure you reset to defaults if you take pictures with different settings.

• Check your lens for dust every now and then.

There are obviously times when it’s very ‘quiet’—which just means you don’t see any animals! In that case, it’s fine to doze off, relying on your driver to wake you up if there’s a good sighting.

However, getting into good habits can help you save time and therefore avoid missing out on some great photos.

Verdict

Whether you do your wildlife photography in Africa, Antarctica or just your back garden, the benefit of obeying the two-second rule is that you give yourself the best possible chance to take great pictures. You gain the thrill of ‘getting the shot’ and avoid the heartbreak of ‘the one that got away’.

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