How to Photograph Wildlife

Animals that aren't moving much are easy to photograph.

I'm going to start this post with a fact--if you're photographing wildlife at a zoo or at a place, say, like the Galapagos, where the animals are not moving much, photographing animals is a cinch.

A good photograph can be had with any camera, point-and-shoot or SLR.

All you have to do is step away a bit from the animal and zoom in on the whole animal or a body part and snap a photo. If you do this with your camera's zoom greater than 100 mm (35 mm equivalent), you'll get a nice blurred background with a clear animal in the foreground (if you didn't shake your camera).

In order to enhance the blur in the background set your camera's f-stop to the lowest it'll go, say, f/4.0 will do (large aperture; lens open wide) in Av (aperture priority mode). I\

If there's little light, like the light you would have on the floor of the Amazon jungle, set your ISO speed to the highest it will go, say, 1600.

In order not to get blur your shutter speed should be no more than the inverse of half the of the focal length you're using on your camera. For example if you're shooting an animal using a focal length of 100 mm, your shutter speed can be no more than 1/50th of a second.

Now if you're photographing fast moving animals, say a monkey in a tree, you'll need a really good lens such as the Canon EF 300/4L. The lens has a good zoom (to 300 mm), image stabilization and is reasonably fast (4L). It's also reasonably priced.

Now, when you're out in the field and you're zooming in on a moving animal, try and move your camera along with it. In that way, you're more likely to get a clearer image.

And if you're photographing an owl in a tree use a tripod with your zoom. You can use flash also, but I don't recommend it because it'll freak out the animal.