How to Make Trade-offs in Photography
There’s no such thing as a free lunch…
Red Run
Wildlife photography is all about trade-offs. It’s almost impossible to maximise convenience, flexibility and image quality while minimising noise and motion blur—and there’s never enough light, so trying to shoot at f/16, 1/4000 of a second and 100 ISO is crazy! Here’s a list of the main trade-offs and the best ways to handle them.
Shutter Speed v Aperture v ISO?
Tortoise Crossing
ISO 360, 400mm, f/8, 1/200, 0 EV
The Problem
Choosing the right exposure settings in low light is the eternal trilemma. You need a fast shutter speed to freeze the action, a narrow aperture to keep the background sharp and the lowest native ISO to maximise image quality—but you never have enough light to do all three at once!
The Solution
I buy the fastest prime lenses I can afford and shoot wide open in manual mode with auto ISO. That works most of the time, but if the light is too low to use the right shutter speed, aperture and/or ISO, here’s how I prioritise between them.
Portraits
Eland Horizon
ISO 100, 600mm, f/7.1, 1/20, 0 EV
If I’m taking portraits, I’ll shoot wide open and reduce my shutter speed from my default setting of 1/1000 of a second to 1/500 or even 1/250. If necessary, I’ll use the doubling rule (see article) to keep my ISO as low as possible by steadily reducing the shutter speed even further and taking longer and longer bursts. You only need one sharp shot, so it’s worth a try, and it’s amazing how slow your shutter speed can be. I took this shot of an eland (see above) at f/7.1 to keep the clouds sharp, and my shutter speed dropped to 1/20 of a second!
Hides
Dark Waters
ISO 1250, 130mm, f/2.8, 1/60, -2 EV
If I’m in a hide either before sunrise or after sunset, I underexpose by two or three stops to reflect the fact that the surroundings will be very dark—almost pitch black (see above).
Cameras are programmed to expect the world to reflect 18% of the light falling on it, and that works most of the time. However, it’s no good when it’s very dark and I’m relying on ambient light or even a spotlight to illuminate my subject. That’s why I use negative exposure compensation to correct the brightness and bring down my ISO.
I also make sure my camera doesn’t have an artificial limit when in auto ISO mode. When I was at the Kings Camp hide in South Africa in 2024, my photos were initially far too dark. It turned out that the Sony ⍺1’s default setting was to limit the ISO to 12800! I wanted well-exposed shots at a high ISO rather than underexposed ones at the wrong one, so I changed the maximum ISO to the highest possible value.
Finally, I usually have to compromise on my shutter speed. Most hides are next to waterholes, and the visiting animals and birds spend most of their time drinking. That means they’re relatively static subjects, so I can afford to reduce my shutter speed to 1/60 or even 1/15 of a second. It obviously helps if I can steady my camera on a beanbag or use a tripod.
Night Drives
Dik-dik for Dinner
ISO 5000, 128mm, f/2.8, 1/320, -3 EV
I’m not really a fan of night drives because it’s so hard to take good pictures. However, I recently spent a week in Laikipia Wilderness Camp photographing Giza, the black leopard, and that meant I had to get used to the idea! She only came out to hunt after the sun had set, so there was never enough light for me to use my normal settings.
I could still shoot wide open, of course, but the maximum aperture on my 600mm lens was only f/4, so I just couldn’t use it. In addition, the idea of using my default shutter speed of 1/1000 was simply impossible!
The first thing I had to do was to switch lenses—and that meant switching cameras. I had a Sony ⍺1 and a 70-200mm lens with me that had a maximum aperture of f/2.8. That meant twice as much light could reach the sensor as if I used my 600mm f/4 lens.
It took me a while to work out the best shutter speed. I started out at 1/250, but I ended up with too many shots in which the leopard’s eyes were slightly blurred, so I switched to 1/320. That gave me more sharp shots—but at the expense of an even higher ISO!
Fortunately, the Sony ⍺1 handles low light pretty well, so noise wasn’t too much of an issue. In addition, I used Topaz Photo AI or Lightroom Denoise to clean up my images, and that worked a treat—especially as the background was generally too dark to notice any blotchiness.
The Slow Pan
Panning for Gold
If there really isn’t enough light to take a sharp photo of a moving subject, why even try? Another way to get results is the slow pan (see article). The whole point of this technique is to use a slow shutter speed, so you can use it in very low light.
The idea is to create a sense of energy and movement by keeping the subject’s head sharp while blurring the background and the legs or wings. Because of the slow shutter speed, you can shoot at the native ISO, and there’s very little chance of overexposing the image by maxing out your aperture setting at f/22 or f/36.
Filling the Frame v Getting the Shot
"You should see me run..."
ISO 560, 800mm, f/5.6, 1/1000, 0 EV
The Problem
Animals and especially birds can be quite ‘shy’, or skittish, which leaves wildlife photographers with a difficult problem. Should you get as close as possible to fill the frame or take pictures from where you are? If you try to get too close, you might scare off your subject, but if you remain far away, it’ll be so small in the frame that not even cropping will rescue your shots!
The Solution
This is a difficult one, and what I choose to do depends on my subject and how skittish it’s likely to be. If it’s a rare and/or very shy bird, such as a Verreaux’s eagle-owl, I’ll flip the switch on my 600mm lens to activate the built-in 1.4x teleconverter (making it into an 840mm lens) and take a few ‘safety shots’.
If I’m still too far away, I might even switch to DX mode, which increases the magnification by 1.6x, giving me the equivalent of a 1344mm focal length. I’ve set up a custom button for that, so all I need to do is press the Sub-Selector (or ‘nubbin’) to toggle between full-frame and DX mode.
Once I’m happy that I’ve got some kind of shot, I’ll then get a bit closer. If I’m in a safari truck, I’ll ask my driver to get 10-15 yards closer and take another burst. By repeating the process a few times, I can sometimes get the best of both worlds: fill the frame and get the shot!
It doesn’t always happen, though. In the case of this picture (see above), I saw the cheetah on the branch of a tree when we were a couple of hundred yards away. I had a feeling it was about to jump down, and I didn’t want to miss the shot, so I asked my driver to stop so that I could take a few pictures.
I was intending to adopt my usual strategy of taking safety shots from distance before moving in closer, but just as I got ready to press the shutter, the animal jumped down to the ground. I managed to get a few shots, including this one, but the other guest in my vehicle didn’t get anything.
When I asked if he’d got any good pictures, he just said, “No, I was too busy staring at the cheetah. I didn’t even think about my camera!”
Lesson learned…
Convenience v Quality
Eddie the Penguin
Shot with a Nikon D810 and an 80-400mm lens on Brown Bluff, Antarctica
The Problem
In photography, there’s one major trade-off between convenience and quality. I’m talking about whether to buy zooms or primes. Zoom lenses are very convenient. They cover a wide range of focal lengths, which means one lens can replace two or three lenses with fixed focal lengths, and you don’t have to change lenses as often. They also make it easier to frame your shots by zooming in or zooming out.
However, prime lenses generally have a wider maximum aperture, which makes it easier to shoot in low light and achieve ‘creamy’ bokeh. They also offer the best possible optical performance, guaranteeing tack-sharp results almost every time.
The Solution
There’s no easy answer to this one. It depends on your own personal circumstances. For example, if you find it hard to handle big lenses or carry around a heavy camera bag, it might make sense for you to shoot with a single zoom. If your subjects are generally some distance away, you might be able to get away with a 180-600mm or 200-600mm lens.
In my case, I’m a professional wildlife photographer, so quality trumps convenience. I want to produce the very best images I can, and I’m less concerned with the weight of my lenses or the limitations of a fixed focal length. In addition, I spend a lot of time on safari in Africa, which means I don’t have to shoot handheld very often.
Having said that, it depends on the focal length. At the moment, I have 24-70mm and 70-200mm zoom lenses. I’ve always bought zooms for shorter focal lengths and primes for longer ones. That’s partly because wide-angle lenses tend to have wider maximum apertures and partly because there’s less of a premium on sharpness when you’re taking wide-angle close-ups of an elephant, say. In addition, I don’t tend to take many wildlife shots at less than 600mm, and I only ever use my 24-70mm for interior shots of safari lodges!
Finally, there is a way to get convenience and quality, which is to use a lens with a built-in teleconverter. That’s why I swapped one of my Sony ⍺1 cameras and a 600mm lens for a Nikon Z8 and a 600mm lens with a built-in 1.4x teleconverter.
I now have the choice of shooting either at 600mm or 840mm (or even in DX format at 1344mm!). That’s very handy if I’m switching between animals and birds or between environmental portraits and close-ups. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a pretty good halfway house.
Automation v Control
Stealth
The Problem
Photography can get very complicated, so it’s easy to reach for the auto setting to make life easier. However, in doing so, you do lose control. As I always tell my students, “You’re far cleverer than your camera because only you know what you’re photographing!”
There are many tasks you can automate, but the main ones are focus and exposure. Modern autofocus systems with eye detection and tracking are a great help to wildlife photographers, but they still sometimes go wrong. Leaves or foreground objects can get in the way, and most AF systems struggle in low light.
Automatic exposure modes are another great way to reduce stress. If you use aperture or shutter priority and/or auto ISO, you don’t need to worry about your photos being too bright or too dark, so you can concentrate on waiting for the right moment and getting the right composition.
However, the camera’s exposure system is only as good as the engineer who programmed it, and, as I mentioned earlier, it’s based on an assumption that doesn’t always hold. The world isn’t always 18% grey, so your camera is going to be fooled by shots of a polar bear on ice or a black leopard after sunset. By trying to reach the ‘ideal’ exposure level, it’ll underexpose naturally bright scenes and overexpose dark ones.
The Solution
Focus
I always use autofocus, but it doesn’t always work. The lens sometimes ‘hunts’ and can’t acquire my subject. At that point, there are a few things I can do to help the camera do its job:
I can switch to a smaller focus area to avoid foreground distractions such as leaves and grass and place the rectangle in the viewfinder over the eye of my subject.
I can focus on a patch of ground nearer to me than my subject. This generally forces my Z8 to focus properly. I can then go back to my subject and acquire it normally.
I can set up a preset focus distance. I’ve set up the fn1 and fn2 buttons on the front of my Z8 to save and retrieve a particular distance, and the focus response is instantaneous. That saves a lot of time and frustration!
I can take longer bursts if I know that it’s a hit-or-miss situation. For example, I once photographed cheetahs from underneath a safari truck. There was a lot of long grass in the foreground, and it was almost impossible to acquire focus most of the time. When I did get a lock, I made sure to take a long burst just in case some of the shots were out of focus.
Exposure
I generally shoot in manual with auto ISO. That means I don’t have to worry about the exposure as my camera will choose the right ISO to get a well-exposed photo, neither too bright nor too dark. It works pretty well, and I can make any adjustments by using exposure compensation.
One of the good things about mirrorless cameras is that they have WYSIWYG electronic viewfinders, ie What You See Is What You Get. That means you can see in advance whether your photos are going to be too bright or too dark and change your settings beforehand without having to take test shots all the time. It’s particularly easy on the ⍺1, which has a dedicated exposure compensation dial.
When taking silhouette shots at sunrise or sunset, I switch to aperture priority and set my ISO manually to the lowest native value (100 on my ⍺1 and 64 on my Z8). This is still an ‘automatic’ exposure mode because the camera automatically floats the shutter speed to get the right brightness. However, it’s better than manual with auto ISO for silhouettes because it’s easier to keep the ISO at the same level.
The sky is almost always bright enough for me to shoot at 64 or 100 ISO, especially when the sun is in the frame, and if I want both the subject and the sky to be sharp, I can dial in a narrow aperture like f/16.
Price v Everything Else!
Dustbuster
The Problem
Photography is a money pit, so the biggest trade-off most photographers have to make involves the price of all the kit. High-end mirrorless cameras like the Sony ⍺1 II, the Canon R1 or the Nikon Z8/Z9 cost thousands of pounds, and the best telephoto lenses are even more expensive! It’s all very well wanting a 30 fps camera or an f/4 600mm lens, but can you really justify the expense if you’re on a limited budget?
The Solution
The answer is probably to buy the best equipment you can afford. That sounds simple, but where do you draw the line? Well, there are various options to avoid breaking the bank:
Decide what’s important and prioritise. Camera manufacturers are constantly competing against one another to offer higher frame rates, more megapixels or better eye tracking, but do you actually need all those features?
Buy an older model of camera or lens. If it’s not the latest version, it’ll probably be discounted somewhere, so if you can do without a few bells and whistles, you might be able to find a bargain!
Shop online. When I bought my first Sony ⍺1, the Recommended Retail Price was £6,500, and it was hard to find a lower price. However, I managed to find a website that was only asking £6,000, so I saved £500!
Buy second-hand. I know it’s nice to unbox a brand-new gizmo. It makes you feel like you’re on top of the world! However, the features will be exactly the same on a second-hand version, and you might be able to save yourself a lot of money…
Buy abroad. If you’re lucky enough to travel to the States or the Far East, you might be able to buy camera equipment at a discount—depending on the exchange rate! In addition, you might be able to get products on the ‘grey market’ in places like Hong Kong, which again might save you money.
Trade in your old kit. Old cameras and lenses do have a resale value, so it’s worth trading in your old gear to save money. Some lenses hold their value very well, so you might even make a profit (!), but even if you lose a third or more of your money, it still cushions the blow.
Verdict
"Is this close enough...?"
Photography is all about trade-offs, which can be very frustrating and annoying! There is no ‘ideal’ camera, lens or accessory, so you regularly need to compromise on convenience, optical quality, price and many other factors. In addition, there’s hardly ever enough light to get the ‘ideal’ camera settings, so you often need to choose between the best aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
The good news is that there are various ways to make the trade-offs easier, either by deciding what’s most important, using a different technique or knowing how and where to save money on your photography gear.
We live in an imperfect world, but I hope this article will let you cope a bit better with its imperfections…!
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