I was camping near the Jersey shore last week. I always love spending the day on Island Beach State Park. It was late in the afternoon. It was the last day before leaving and it was the last trail to the beach that I would walk before leaving the park. I turned a corner and saw something move ahead of me. I realize it was a red fox. Of course, I had my 24-70mm lens on my camera. The fox saw me and went behind some shrubs. I froze and watch to see if he would emerge from the other side. I then saw him down the hill in the high grass. He then stopped where he is in the photo. I waited till he looked the other way and dropped my backpack. He looked toward me. I froze. He looked the other direction and I dropped down below the high grass to change my lens to my 100-400mm. When I peeked up, he was still there. I waited till he looked away to pop up and get in position to take shots. He looked over his shoulder and I snapped away. How lucky was I. He was truly a beautiful creature.
Specific Feedback Requested
I didn’t feel like I had much time to change many setting because I had no idea when he/she would head down the hill and he/she did take off after about 3 shots. Because of this situation my ISO was very high and I ended up with a lot of noise. I think I was still able to pull this photo off, thanks to Topaz DeNoise.
Any suggestions appreciated
Technical Details
Sony a7r iv 100mm-400mm with 1.4 TC @400mm
f/20
ss/1/1250
ISO 16000
I love the pose you got from the fox, Donna. Image quality looks fine to me. If this were mine, I’d think about cropping a bit off the right side and maybe adding a touch on the top if you have it. I suspect the fox is in its winter coat, but it looks a bit dull on my tablet. You might bring up the brightness and saturation of the fox just a little bit.
I think this should be in Wildlife since the habitat isn’t obviously human created, so I’m moving it over there.
The fox looks nice and relaxed. Glad to see that. I like your composition since he is looking to our right to leave the space. I think that is just fine.
I don’t understand the exposure settings at all: Looks like a good case of Auto-ISO unless 16000 is a typo for 1600. Even with that… Why f/20?? You are just introducing diffraction limitation at that point for sure. I’m guessing to get to f/20, this really was ISO 16000???
The image looks underexposed. I opened in PS and looked at a histogram from a levels dialog.
This is before adjusting the whites slider
Oh what a wonderful experience. I’m green with envy!
Others have echoed a lot of my initial reaction to your picture, but one other thing comes to mind that might help. I have a wildlife Custom Mode on my camera that’s accessible from the dial on the top. Looks like Sony calls the same thing Memory Recall and is on a similar dial. When I’m shooting something else and a critter comes into view, all I have to do is turn the dial and I know I’ve got settings that will give me the best baseline to start with for wildlife. It might not be perfect, but it will be close and any additional tweaks will be quick and easy. If you want some ideas based on how I have mine set, let me know.
But anyway - good job with the stealthy lens change and the resulting image even if the settings are less than ideal.
So many things to think about when we unexpectedly come upon an opportunity like this! Keith’s tweaks certainly helped, and you have good suggestions from others. I’ll just say congrats on spotting this guy, and sticking with it to get a shot.
@Dennis_Plank@Keith_Bauer I posted a rework that I hope is better. I didn’t have the room at the top, Dennis, but CA did a good job. Keith the plain truth was beginner jitters of seeing a fox that close. We surprised each other on the trail and he took off. I figured that was that, but then I saw him stop down the hill. At that point I had my 24-70mm lens on my camera. I waited till he was looking away to drop my bag and then waited again for him to look away to squat down below the tall grass to get my lens change. I had been shooting some birds on the beach earlier (no tripod) that were close with my other lens. I wanted all of them sharp and iso was set to auto. Once I got my long lens on, I was surprised that he was still there. He looked to the right of me and I figured someone was coming up the trail, so I knew I only had time to grab a shot before he ran. I got 3 shots and he took off. It was dusk when I took this shot and I had a 1.4 teleconverter on my 100-400mm. I knew there would be tons of noise, but surprisingly the exposure was not bad. In fact, I didn’t change it at all in ACR. DeNoise did a good job on the noise. Anyway, that’s the first time I had an animal appear in front of me like that and I just wanted to get the shot before he ran.
@Kris_Smith@terryb Thanks for your nice comments. I replied to @Keith_Bauer to tell the story of why my setting were so bad. Kristen, I do have my memory setting configured, but I have one set to birds and another set to landscape. I haven’t ever taken a photo of an animal, because I never see any that are close enough for me to get a descent shot. This was such a surprise for me and I had to change lens before I could get a shot and it was dusk. Thanks for suggesting this because if I didn’t know about this feature, it’s a great one to know about. I’m happy the shot turned out ok, even if my excitement trumped my ability to get my settings correct.
@Ronald_Murphy Thanks Ronald. The fur under his neck is grey. On my .psd image it looks grey. Sometimes colors change depending on the browser you’re using. I’ll check it again.
Cool. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who uses Custom Modes all the time. Still, your bird settings should be ok for most wildlife. Right now my Wildlife mode is set basically for hummingbirds since I shoot them a lot in the summer. Switching to it for a porcupine, just to use the example of the last non-bird I photographed, didn’t require that I changed much except the shutter speed.
Quick thinking on your part to drop down out of sight and change to a long lens, Donna. This is a wonderful look at him. To only get the opportunity to shoot 3 shots and get something like this at late evening is very impressive, especially with the jitters as you said, seeing an animal like this right in front of you. Great job! Maybe you have a wall to hang it on!
Thanks Shirley. It was really exciting to run into this beautiful fox. I usually don’t see them this close and they take off when they see me. I actually got another shot of a different fox. When I got back to my car, there was one sitting in the parking lot. No one else was there. Since I have my long lens on I froze and got several shots. How lucky to see 2 fox in one day. I’ll post a couple if any come out good. I wish I did have wall space. I might have to rearrange things to make make room.
An excellent opportunity and good job of responding to it, Donna! It appears that it was an overcast day which means your rework version is probably the closest to real life brightness and colors. I like the pose and your composition is just right for an animal that is looking back. Congratulations on a very nice fox photo!
It appears that it was the aperture setting of f/20 that caused all of your exposure problems. I have learned to preset the aperture to the most likely setting I would need in a time limited situation just before I remove the lens from the camera. That way, when I pick it up and I’m in a hurry, it’s one less thing I have to worry about. The Sony 100-400 (which I have) is almost always going to be used for wildlife so I would set the aperture at f/5.6 before I remove the lens. I always shoot in manual so I still need to set the ISO for the conditions but if you’re shooting in auto you’ll automatically get a lower ISO setting and a faster shutter speed if your aperture is preset to f/5.6. Also, any photo taken in lower light will have amplified blues. If you have the time before the shot you can choose the shade option for white balance and it will warm up your image nicely and lose the blues. If not, you can do the same thing in post processing with most raw processing software. That would take care of the strong blue tint in the white & gray parts of this image.
Wonderful that you could manage to get the shot!! I’ll add that content-aware fill has made some clone repeats that will be easy to fix. The sharpening settings have been overdone and give an artificial look. It would be worth revisiting them. Denoise has come a long way in the last few years but sharpening for poor focus (or diffraction) is often just not possible. If it affects different areas differently, as here, a masked layer can help.
@Gary_Minish@Diane_Miller Thank you both for your helpful critiques. Gary, that’s a wonderful idea to set the aperture to f/5.6 before I take it off the camera. I have never been in a situation that I had to act so quickly to change a lens to get a shot. Thanks also for the tip about white balance. I’m not sure why I got a bluish tint on the jpeg that I posted. I’ve looked at my .psd file in photoshop and the bluish tint isn’t showing there. I really appreciate your advice, thank you.
Diane, I saw the clone repeats after I reposted, but decided not to repost again. I’ll get those fixed. I guess I got a little carried away on the sharpening. This is my first animal photo and I wanted it to be sharp. I think I know the areas that look over sharpened and I can mask some of that out. This one really caught me by surprise and hopefully I’ll be a little more careful about being ready for it next time. Thanks for your suggestions. I really appreciate all the help.
Hi Donna !
You seem to have good hunting skills, good for photographer in you
I just can’t believe, you have got so many great suggestions from the wonderful community we have here.
That’s the beauty of NPN
Looking forward to more of your work !
Thanks so much. Yes, I got a lot of great help from this community. I wish I had more opportunities to take wildlife photos here. The animals we have here run before you can get a shot and trying to determine where they might show up if you wait for them could waste a lot of your time. I love the work you do with elephants. It must be amazing to watch one of these grand species in the wild! At least I can enjoy them through your photography. Thanks.
