To give yourself the best chance to capture a great expression AND get the photo in focus, I highly recommend you use burst mode when taking photos of your pets, even if they’re sitting still.
Why?
Our dogs are living animals. They will give us a range of expressions – especially for less eager dogs (like Journey), where you may have limited opportunities to capture him with his ears up. Therefore, the moment they give you an expression that isn’t bored/disinterested, you want to have the opportunity to capture a number of photos of that alert expression.
This also means that we have more chances to get in-focus photos.
Let’s say Journey is looking bored. I’ve got my back button focus activated, the focus point over his eye, ready for the perfect moment…
Then, all of a sudden, he perks his ears.
If you look at the photos in this sequence (click to enlarge), you’ll notice that there’s only maybe… 4 of them where his ears are up and forward, but only ONE where I would say he’s totally alert and engaged (can you tell which one??) All of these photos were taken in a matter of maybe 2-3 seconds?. But imagine if I had only been taking one photo at a time.
If I have the camera taking one photo at a time, I’ll probably get one, MAYBE two photos of him looking alert before his ears go back down and he looks bored.
If I have my camera on a kind of “burst mode” where it fires off a number of photos at a time, I might get to take 6-10 photos of him looking alert, before his ears go down.
Now, let’s imagine that in Scenario 1, where we only took two photos…. that one was out of focus, and one he kind of pulled a weird face and his eyes are all wonky. I can now use neither of those photos.
Let’s imagine scenario 2. I took 10 photos. Even if one of them is badly out of focus, two of them are very slightly out of focus, and one is pulling a funny face… I still have 6 useable photos to choose from!!
This doesn’t mean you need your camera on super super fast ultimate speed burst mode.
Mine is usually on “Medium”, unless I’m doing action photos when I’ll burst as fast as possible.
Of course this depends on your camera! If your camera has a slower “Frames per second” rate (how many photos it can take per second), then you may need the burst to be as fast as possible.
Experiment with your camera to find the “sweet spot” between having 50,000 photos with only very slight variations, and not capturing enough so missing out on possible expressions.
NOTE: this will not guarantee your photos will be in focus!! It just takes more photos, and if you have all your settings “correct” as per the focus lessons, should give you more chances to get useable photos.
Some typical "snapshots" from my camera roll after a photoshoot & analysis
Click to enlarge
This whole sequence was from one location, up until the last 4 photos where i moved myself slightly.
I think I would have been asking Journey “Where are the squirrels?!”, which causes him to look all around, and especially up.
In order to give myself the best chance to capture a “pretty” expression (since he can sometimes look a bit dopey), or where he isn’t looking crazed, I want as many options to choose from as possible. In some, his mouth is more open, in some, his neck is longer, in some, he’s more alert.
Video from this shoot coming soon, to show you how many similar photos I’ll take at one spot, and the rationale behind it. Because “spray and pray” also isn’t a good strategy!
DRO (Dynamic Range Optimisation) - Sony only?
By default, Sony cameras come with “DRO Auto” turned on in their settings.
DRO is supposed to analyse the scene and automatically correct contrast and brightness.
I am NOT a fan of my camera automatically “correcting” anything, since it doesn’t actually know what I want… and in my experience with DRO turned on it can definitely cause some problems. Partly because DRO doesn’t affect the RAW files. So what this means is you’re seeing one version of the photo on your screen, with one version of the histogram….
But your photo COULD look very different once you get it onto your computer.
From personal experience, these photos are much, much darker than the histogram suggested they were in camera, leading to the histogram being totally unreliable.
We don’t need it on, since we’ll be editing the RAW files anyway.
White Balance
There are a few ways you can adjust the white balance in camera, though it’s reasonably irrelevant when working with RAW files.
My camera is always on Auto WB.
There are usually a number of presets for different weather or lighting conditions.
And there are some options to set the WB yourself by using grey cards or expodisks.
To Use a Grey Card to Set the WB In Camera
When using a grey card (like this one), you take a photo of the grey card where the subject will be – even better, hold the card in front of their face so the light will be exactly the same. Have the grey card filling the whole photo
Go to the White Balance settings. There will likely be an option for Custom White Balance.
You should be able to choose a photo for it to determine what “perfect grey” is, and it will adjust the WB accordingly.
That being said… you don’t HAVE to use the camera’s WB as the final settings once you get to editing. In the woods, it might be FAR too green due to all the naturally green light bouncing around, and you have to correct it anyway. There really is no magic solution for white balance except to train your eyes and practise.