The May Day holiday is here. The five-day holiday, coupled with the Spring Festival holiday that was ruined under the epidemic, is a retaliatory journey for most people. Of course, not everyone will choose to travel far, and you can also have fun in the city where you live, such as a must-visit zoo for parent-child activities. If you like photographers, you will inevitably train your animal photography skills when you come to the zoo. Today, we will explain some tips for shooting animals to help you improve your photography level.
telephoto lens or "going the world with one mirror" is more suitable
In fact, whether it is going to a zoo in the city, safari , or going to the wilderness to shoot wild animals, as long as it is shooting animals, at least one lens that can reach the telephoto focal range is needed. If there is no simple telephoto lens at home, then a "one-lens go all over the world" lens can also be perfectly solved, such as lenses such as Nikon Z 24-200mm and Canon RF 24-240mm. The telephoto focal segment here mainly refers to about 150mm-200mm, and of course longer has more benefits.
However, in the zoo in the city, because the distance between animals and us is relatively close, 200mm is already fully qualified. However, if there are lenses with a longer focal range, they may not be very useful in most cases. For example, it is very useful to "shoot birds" in the wild duck lake in the zoo, such as zoom lenses such as 70-300mm, 100-400mm, 100-500mm, and even 400mm fixed-focus, 600mm fixed-focus, etc. If you are shooting in the field, for safety reasons, it is recommended that you use lenses with a relatively long focal range, such as 600mm and 800mm focal ranges. In fact, the author has nothing to recommend in terms of
body. Now is the era of micro-single camera , and the products and technologies are very mature. The general picture quality of cameras is excellent now, especially APS-C frame and full frame micro-single cameras. You can buy and use them with confidence, and the general level is very high. As for which one to choose, it mainly depends on your ability to withstand and use purpose. If economic strength allows, the author’s suggestion is to choose a full-frame camera, especially the current full-frame micro-single camera, which is mature in technology, suitable for video and photography, and will have a wide range of uses after purchase.
Small animals shoot the whole, big animals shoot the local
Next, let’s talk about the skills of shooting animals’ framing composition. In the zoo, you can see all kinds of animals. You can see dozens of animals after a trip. If you walk around the zoo for a whole day, you will not be able to see hundreds of animals. Each animal has its own characteristics, so when we take pictures, we must find the characteristics of these animals and record these characteristics, rather than taking a full body shot of each animal.
The principle I summarized is to take pictures of small animals as a whole and take pictures of large animals as a part. Of course, you should also adapt to the situation. If the distance is relatively far and the composition is wonderful, large animals can also take pictures of the whole; if the distance is very close, small animals can also take pictures of the part. Therefore, the principle is to take pictures of small animals as a whole and large animals as a part, but everyone’s ability to adapt to changes should not be less, and they should not be rigid. They must be flexibly used to improve their photography.
The most interesting moment to catch animals
Animals are not humans and will not be fixed there for you to take pictures, so the most important thing in shooting animals is to capture them. In order to increase the success rate of capture, the author’s suggestion is to turn on the high-speed continuous shooting mode, and don’t forget to choose to turn on the tracking focus mode. If the camera supports animal eye recognition focus and other modes, it will also be turned on.
High-speed continuous shooting plus tracking focus is the best way to photograph animals. If the animal is not active, it will stay there all the time. You can also use ordinary single-shot and single-shot shooting directly. However, if the animal is more active, it is recommended to turn on high-speed continuous shooting and tracking focus to capture the photos. In this way, when you go back to select photos later, you can choose the most interesting photo from them.
In fact, for ordinary people, especially beginners of photography, they may not be able to take very wonderful animal photography works every time, but they can always find a few photos that they are satisfied with.In fact, animal photography not only emphasizes photography skills, but also part of luck. Many professional photographers have reached their peak in photography skills, but some people have taken animal photography works that shocked the world. Some of the factors are luck, which just happened to catch that moment.
Not everyone wants to be a professional photographer, most users just want to take satisfactory photos. For this group of users, animal photography does not require everyone to go to practice. When you take your family to the zoo to visit, you can practice photography skills. On May Day, bring your beloved camera and start an animal photography journey to the zoo.
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