Focusing animals

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interelectronix

Active member
Today I tried some wildlife shots and poorly failed due to very bad conditions.

Lots if snow and dark furred little beasts. I tried to handle it with CineD and came around with tweaking the setting. The worst on the animal shoots is they don´t move when they should an vice versa.

Anybody go some tips on focusing animals ?
 
Are you talking about focus problems or image problems? In situations like this, auto focus usually doesn't work well at all because it will not really know what to focus on, or change focus. Using manual focus, iris, and knee settings is imperative for a clean, consistent image -- more so than a matrix setting.
 
Birds are a real pain for me. You can never follow them, they always go the wrong way... Gators on the other hand, are usually quite cooperative. Buffalo too. I guess it depends on your skill, and the animal you are after. And that is what it boils down to, how well you know your subjects. You can find where they are likely to be, and wait them out.
 
What kind of animals?

I've filmed animals in snow with the HVX and it came out quite well.

I use AF all the time but most people will tell you not to.

Just experiment and see what works best for you.
 
Different kinds of animals. I went in a wildlife park. ( goats, pigs, horses, rabbits )

I totally agree with the autofocus always on. For me it was not possible to focus manually. Except for non moving animals and then I prefer to take a photo.

Regular my zebras are set to 75%. For snow I adjusted them to 50% and got much better results.

It is really hard to handle this snow shots. There was a very hard to handle sunlight. A few seconds there was to less and then there was too much light.

Anybody made experience with 1080 24p in this conditions ? This raises the bar again and makes the focusing even harder.
 
When I shoot in the snow I set my zebras to 100% and to 95%. I usually use my 100% zebra and open up the iris until the snow blows out then back down just so the zebras disappear.

I've shot allot of wildlife this way and it's how I will handle the snow in Yellowstone this February.

You can set your auto iris up to underexpose a bit and just use that for fast changing lighting conditions.

However sometimes conditions are such that the best thing to do is to put the camera away and just enjoy the experience.
 
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