A little different type of photography
When you get the message "Hey do you want to photograph some deer coming out of their velvet?" "I responded Of course!"
As I spent the rest of the day thinking how awesome this is going to be I started to realize, well i really do not do a ton of wildlife photography. Time to research after searching websites, tiktok, and any other social media platform for advice i came to the conclusion that these settings would be golden for the shoot. Adding in the challenge that i just upgraded my camera a week or so ago.
Now, if I have experienced any success with photographing deer, very little of it has been due to any technical ability with the camera; operating a camera system and getting the very best from it, is certainly not a strength of mine; it’s a good job that camera bodies and lenses are so good these days! I would say it was pure luck.
When I got there I was greeted and taken to where the deer were. Now in my mind i was like how am I going to see these deer.. its preserve over a 100 acres. Well i was surprised when 2 large bucks came right over... I had to manually close my mouth, growing up in a family that hunted i thought a standard 8 point buck was huge. Well I was checked pretty fast these animals where huge with symmetrical racks, one with an Atypical rack and drop tines. After realizing i was spending more time admiring instead of clicking my shutter on my camera i went to work.
But, for the record, I will briefly describe the general settings that I use and when I use them.
For a stationary or slow-moving deer in low light:
Shutter time: 1/200 to 1/320 s
Aperture: f/4 or f/5.6
For a stationary or slow-moving deer in bright light:
Shutter time: 1/640 to 1/800 s
Aperture: f/4 or f/5.6
Note: Shutter speed is kept on the high side to facilitate the capture of a sharp image if yawning, grooming and other unexpected movements suddenly takes place.
For rapidly moving deer in all light conditions:
Shutter time: 1/800 to 1/1600 s
Aperture: f/4 or f/5.6
Motion blur is to be kept to a minimum.
Focal length used is anywhere from 200 to 800 mm.
Manual mode in operation.
Auto ISO is selected.
Moveable single point focus and in continuous servo mode is used.
Frame rate: As fast as possible, but the images are shot in short bursts to reduce the probability of disturbing the deer.
Panning is used, where appropriate.
The settings above apply for when there is a single deer that I want to be in focus in the image. Where there is more than one deer present, the aperture is narrowed to f/8 all the way down to f/13, depending on the situation. The closer the deer are to the lens, the narrower the aperture (i.e. higher the ‘f’ number) needs to be.
I have to say Golden Hour saved the day with these photos and added the dramatic flair i needed.
It was overall and amazing experience, so of course when I went home I had to start editing right away. Critiquing myself over certain things I could of done better. But all in all the photos that i took were pretty awesome and i will have a little more experience for the next shoot.
