We all know that sunrise and sunset lighting is beautiful, and so is soft and diffused light, but it's just not possible to have ideal lighting all the time when shooting nature outdoors. Such was the case last month in Kenya when I photographed this red-headed agama lizard. When the sun is fairly high in the sky and the light is harsh and contrasty, the best way to deal with that is to have the sun at your back so the subject is front lit. It's when the light comes from the side or the back that contrast becomes a serious problem because the shadows go black. Side lighting and backlighting can look great, but near midday they usually don't work. My settings for this were 1/160, f/36, and the ISO was 800.
2 Comments
Sep 6, 2016, 5:30:38 PM
Jim - Hi Bob, Because my focal length was so long (100-400mm lens plus 1.4x converter plus the crop factor of 1.6 equalling 896mm), I knew I needed as much DOF as I could get because of the oblique angle of the plane of the sensor to the back of the reptile. Therefore, I closed the lens all the way down. I did choose auto ISO, yes. The shutter speed could have been a lot faster to guarantee a sharp picture (this was a bit risky), but the lizard was motionless and I was resting the camera on a solid support so I thought I could get away with 1/160.
Sep 6, 2016, 11:34:45 AM
Bob Turner - Hi Jim. Did you dial in this setting from your experience or set either F-stop or shutter speed. Do you use auto ISO for shots of this type where subject may just leave quickly.