Hi guys
I recently bought a new lens from Canon with wildlife in mind, landscape/fine art has always been my 2nd choice and wildlife is what I really enjoy.
Well I bought the following model: EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM and the photo below is a test shot I took during the weekend - I have recently teamed up with a safari company in Tanzania and I'm supposed to update their photo stock with fresh and professional wildlife photos for them to use. I'm really exited about this and can't wait!
I took this photo as a test during the weekend and I kinda like it since it's not a ordinary wildlife photo with the animal as the fixated focus point. Do you have any thoughts?
You are by the way more than welcome to visit my website if you did like to see some of my wildlife photos :)
Hi Mikkel,
I think the color rendition is good, and the image is sharp. At 400mm not an easy thing to do. The challenge is always how much quality light you have to work with. So wrt the composition... the image seems to be more about the trees than the elk IMHO.....the elk is looking out of the frame...might try to compose with the elk looking into the frame. You might need to get closer or add a tele-converter to get the reach needed (but you'll sacrifice even more light) to really get animals to fill the frame with out risking getting eaten or trampled.
Best...Mike
Thanks for the feedback Michael. I was quite far away so I had to do a bit of cropping. It's not a top notch photo, but I liked how the deer was standing up against the tall trees. The idea when I saw the deer was to let it fight against the trees as focus points.
As you have already seen on my website, I had better luck later and shot a quite good portrait of another deer where it was filling out the frame :)
just went over to your website...very nice work....this is the image to post!
http://www.beiter.dk/wp-content/gallery/tanzania-africa-2015/M5A7673.jpg
Thank you Michael. I'm glad that you like my work! Cheers :)
I like the composition, and that lens is great, but you're not getting the most out of it. Even with IS, 1/30 wide open is not going to yield great results. Up the ISO so you can stop it down a stop, and get a little higher shutter speed. Your MKIII should be able to handle a higher ISO with ease. As long as you're in AV, you can set the ISO to auto, and set a minimum shutter speed too.
Since you were at the limit of the focal length, not much you could do to get closer, although I think this might have been better a bit tighter. I started with the 70-200, then I got that lens, then the Sigma 150-600, and finally the Sigma 300-800 f5.6. Now I can get as close as I need to. If you're not married to the idea of full frame, try a crop body with that lens, to give you some extra reach.
Lovely feedback, thanks! It was one of the first pictures which I took with the lens. So I have to lear how to use it to it's full potential and I really liked the idea of setting the ISO to auto i AV mode and then having a minimum shutter speed.
As you can see above from Michael, he has posted a photo I took later that day much closer to the object.
The 2nd image is okay, but again, a faster shutter speed would have made it much better. Look at how soft the mouth is. Also, the bokeh on the 100-400 is pretty horrible, but there isn't much we can do about that.