Wildlife photos in less than optimal lighting

[waltesefalcon]

Yesterday I went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge for a hike, I was doing between six and seven miles over some broken terrain. So, I decided to only carry one lens, my 18-140 I find it to be a good all purpose kind of lens. I didn't get out there until close to two, the first half of my hike took me east, so the sun was at my back and lighting was not bad. However, on my return west I was traveling into a low hanging sun. When I did encounter some buffalo and later some elk, I was in a poor position to catch a good photo, especially with the buffalo. I came out of a stand of trees and the buffalo were on a ridge above me and with the sun to my 10 o clock. A bit later I encountered the elk who were also west of me, but we were more or less on the same elevation. In these situations is there much of anything you can do to minimize the amount of harsh back lighting?

 

[DrEntropy]

It looks like you did about as well as you could with the exposure, under the circumstances. The way I'd approach that would be to over-expose by a half to one stop (Or better, bracket several shots) and let the highlights fall where they may. I ran your two images through GIMP to use the "curves" tool to open up the shadow details with fair results. May have had a bit more "room" to open up the buffalo shot, but that would likely lose the foreground detail. Adobe wares would allow a lot more selective "tweaking".

 

[waltesefalcon]

Thanks Doc. I haven't tried making a bracketed composition yet. I may need to give that a try in the near future, I think it would be the best solution to this issue. I am uncertain how to combine the elements of several shots together to make a bracketed shot, though. Is this something that the software does if you give it three different exposures, or do you have to become good with a razor blade and glue?

I didn't try to mess around with the exposure after the fact because I figured you'd lose the warmth in the color and much of the texture of the shadows.

 

[Celtic 77]

I don't know if you saw my earlier comment, but perhaps just try to shoot in manual mode. Set a ISO of about 400 (old Tri-X days!) and your shutter speed to the closest reciprocal... 1/400 th of a second. Then just find the correct exposure with the aperture. Then open the aperture one stop and then close it down a stop...check each image before adjusting either way.

 

[waltesefalcon]

I only shoot in manual mode. I'm not good enough to use auto modes yet. Once I have a good handle on photography I'll start using more auto settings and learn what the camera is capable of.

400 is a pretty decent ISO, but I often shoot at 200 just because we get so much sunlight. Since my photos are often under exposed, I should probably stick to 400 more often.

 

[Celtic 77]

Bracketing is very simple. If you're shooting at for example, 1/125 at f5.6, go one stop over exposed to f 4 and one under exposed at f8 and see the results.