Are you Taking too Many Photos?
How many is too many…?!
"Is this close enough...?"
When I’m on a Paul Goldstein trip, he often accuses me of taking ‘too many photos’—but how many is too many?! It’s true that you shouldn’t ‘spray and pray’, and very few people want to spend hours and hours looking through thousands of photos, but there are arguments on both sides. Let’s take a closer look…
Cost
Fly Bee
In the bad old days before digital photography, all cameras used film, which meant that you had to buy all your rolls of film and pay to have them developed. That was a very good reason to think twice before pressing the shutter. If you didn’t, you might end up having to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds!
However, digital photography is free! You don’t need to worry about how many pictures you take as the marginal cost is zero. And if you try to argue that depreciation matters, too, I’d say that shutter counts don’t make a great deal of difference these days if you have a mirrorless camera with an electronic shutter.
Time
Eye of the Rhino
The main complaint I hear from guests on safari is that taking more pictures would mean they’d have to spend more time looking through them afterwards. That’s certainly true, but they’re separate problems. If you think it takes too long to rate and edit your photos, you can simply change your workflow to become more efficient. For example, you could rate all your images in grid view in Lightroom rather than looking through them individually or find another ‘hack’ to save time.
‘Spray and Pray’
Dustbuster
It’s often said that some photographers ‘spray and pray’. In other words, they just point their cameras at their subjects and take long bursts of dozens or even hundreds of shots in the hope that one or two might turn out all right! That’s far too random an approach, and I’d never recommend doing things that way.
In particular, it’s important to know when to stop taking pictures. If the bird’s already flown away or the animal is walking off, there’s no point continuing to shoot. Nobody wants butt shots! Just say no…
Proactive vs Reactive
Downward Cat
Another argument is that if you’re proactive rather than reactive, you don’t need to take hundreds of photos because you know what you want in advance and, in an ideal world, you’ll have set things up in advance to maximise your hit rate.
There might be some merit in that, but wildlife photography is not like studio photography. You’re not in a controlled environment, working with models who will do what they’re told. Animals and birds do whatever they want to do, so as Matt Kloskowski would say, you need to ‘embrace the chaos’. You never know what’s coming next, so you can’t possibly plan every single shot.
Continuous Shooting
Watch the Birdies
In the days of film cameras, there was no such thing as ‘continuous shooting’ because you had to take photos one at a time, winding the film on each time. With digital cameras, it suddenly became possible to take a long burst to capture the action.
This brought an obvious advantage for action shots. By shooting in continuous rather than single-shot mode, you’d increase your odds of getting a keeper. However, it was also useful for portraits. Animals and birds often do something unexpected that might ruin a shot, such as blinking their eyes or taking off. If you took a burst, you’d make sure that you had at least one decent shot.
Frame Rates
Red Run
The earliest DSLRs had very low frame rates, but the best Nikon, Canon and Sony mirrorless cameras now offer 20, 30 or even 120 frames per second! That obviously makes a huge difference to how many photos you take. It’s very hard to limit yourself to one or two shots, and in any case, why would you? I always shoot at the maximum possible frame rate just in case. Wildlife photography is a bit like a lottery, so the more tickets you buy, the better your chances of winning!
Pre-Release Capture
Stealth
Another new feature in mirrorless cameras that adds to your shutter count is Pre-Release Capture (aka Pre-capture or Pro Capture). The idea is that the camera starts buffering shots as soon as you focus on your subject, and then, when you finally press the shutter release, it writes them to the memory card.
This is a game changer for bird photography as it allows you to capture a burst of pretty much any bird taking off. You don’t need the reactions of a mongoose any more. You can simply relax and wait for the bird to take off, knowing that you have a whole second to press the shutter.
The downside of Pre-Release Capture is that if you take even one photo, the camera will add a second’s worth of buffered photos, and that can mean as many as 120—depending on your camera’s frame rate.
The Doubling Rule
Cheetahs Never Win
Wildlife photographers tend to spend a lot of time taking pictures in low light. One way of keeping your ISO low and reducing the chances of unsightly noise is to use the Doubling Rule.
The basic idea is that you start by taking a burst at a ‘safe’ shutter speed, such as 1/1000 of a second. You then double your exposure time and take twice as long a burst, ie a couple of seconds at 1/500. You continue doubling your exposure and burst times until your subject disappears. When you review all your images, you start at the end and work backwards. The first sharp photo will be the one with the lowest ISO—by definition.
Using the Doubling Rule is very handy for reducing noise, but it does add to the number of photos you take. Having said that, it doesn’t necessarily add much post-processing time. Once you’ve found the sharpest photo, you can ignore all the rest.
Slow Pans
Panning for Gold
One particular kind of action shot that requires long bursts is the slow pan. This is a very low-percentage technique, so you really have to take a fairly long series of frames to maximise your chances of getting a keeper.
The slow pan is a way of getting more energy and movement into action shots. The problem with using a high shutter speed is that it won’t look like anything is actually moving. Imagine taking a shot of a Formula 1 car driving at 200mph down the Hangar straight at Silverstone. If your shutter speed is at least 1/1000 of a second, it’ll just look as if the car is parked on the circuit!
Far better to experiment with a much slower shutter speed - around 1/50 to 1/200 of a second - in order to generate blurred streaks in all the right places: the wheels, the crowd and the colourful advertising hoardings.
The exact shutter speed to use depends on the speed of your subject, how far away it is and its angle of movement across the frame: the faster it is, the nearer it is and the more perpendicular the angle, the faster your shutter speed needs to be.
The idea, though, is to keep it as SLOW as possible while still keeping the most important part of the subject sharp. In the case of wildlife, that will be the eye (or just the head if the animal is smaller or further away).
For this cheetah shot (see above), I used 1/25 of a second, and the head is pretty sharp. However, I had to take a burst of around 100 shots to guarantee success!
The Decisive Moment
"Ah, grasshopper..."
Another reason to use bursts rather than single shots is to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson called ‘The Decisive Moment’. In the context of wildlife photography, there will always be one particular frame that best captures an action sequence. It’s impossible to plan for as you often have no idea what’s going to happen next! However, if you shoot in continuous mode during the peak of the action, you’ll give yourself a much better chance of coming away with a great image.
When I took this shot of a lilac-breasted roller (see above), I squeezed the shutter release for only a fraction of a second, but at that precise moment, the bird fluttered its wings and gave me the chance to take one of my all-time favourite photos. Yes, I was lucky, but if I’d been in single-shot mode, I’d have had no chance…
Verdict
Eddie the Penguin
Is it really true that you’re taking too many photos? Well, unless you’re spraying and praying, the answer is…probably not! Technology has moved on enormously in the last few years, and features like Pre-Release Capture and electronic shutters have made it much easier to take long bursts at high frame rates. It makes it much easier to guarantee good results, so you might as well use whatever new features are available.
There are times when I switch to single-shot mode, such as when I’m photographing interiors at a safari lodge, but I never do it for wildlife. The chances of missing a key shot are just too great. The same goes for dialling down your frame rate. It might seem ‘wasteful’, but try telling yourself that after you miss out on the perfect wing position because you were shooting at 10 fps rather than 20!
My approach as a photographer has always been to chase great shots, not just good ones. That means not settling for second-best. I don’t care how many shots I take—as long as I’ve captured the decisive moment!
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