New 70-300mm lens. C&C please.

[trades2cash]

Hello everyone. Just got a new lens for my nikon d90 and tried it this morning. The only real problem i have been having is when i shoot in the dense woods it is hard to get a good focus. Any comments would be appreciated as i have so much to learn. The camera settings for this photo was mode shutter priority, shutter speed 1/25 F/5.6 at 300mm. Thanks.................signed Randall

 

[Mgw189]

The focus looks like its on the branches just in front of the deer. I would suggest trying to set the focus to the middle of your view finder. The biggest issue you are going to have shooting in the deep woods is the fact that there are going to be lots of stuff for the camera to focus on.

 

[iriairi]

What ISO were you shooting? Maybe you could crank the ISO a bit higher and change to aperture priority (or manual) to use f11 and get a little less shallow depth of field...

 

[trades2cash]

The ISO setting was 100. I will try your suggestion next time i go out, iriairi. I am still trying to figure out the whole aperture and depth of field stuff.

 

[iriairi]

The ISO setting was 100. I will try your suggestion next time i go out, iriairi. I am still trying to figure out the whole aperture and depth of field stuff.

I completely understand. An exercise that someone had me try in a workshop that might be helpful is to find a subject and take a series of photos changing the aperture and compare them to see the difference. That really helped me. Keep posting the pics!

 

[trades2cash]

Hey thanks for the tip iriairi. I have not even thought ot that. I will try some stuff later today. Thanks again signed ......Randall

 

[Amber_Cullen]

It does look like its focused more on the branches but you did great! I also have a 70-300mm and I LOVE it

 

[puyjapin]

would it be possible to use manual focus?? as im pretty new to all this too and considering getting a 300mm lens...by the way what make is that lense u used?

 

[Overread]

f11 for wildlife is a bit small - the key setting you need to keep an eye on is your shutter speed - 1/25sec is slow for wildlife and chances are you will end up with motion blur from the subject. Also generally its best to keep your shutter speed at least "1/focal length of lens"; so a speed of at least 1/300sec for the 300mm end of hte lens - this is to counter handshake from you.
Larger animals do need a bigger aperture when closer up, but f11 is very small for typical wildlife shooting - stick to f5.6 and maybe as small as f8 in some cases (or when closer up).
Also when you focus try to get the eyes of the subject in focus - if nothing else nail the eyes for a wildlife shot. Manual focus is an option, but its normally slower than autofocus and further the viewfinders for a DSLR are not made for manual focusing, they lack manual focusing aid which are present in earlier film cameras - which means that DSLR manual focusing is a tricky thing

 

[Katier]

Being in woods the lighting is lightly to be shady/low so that explains the very low shutter speed/wide aperture. Given the settings it's an incredibly good picture but as said above you would have been better with higher ISO (400 should be fine) and narrower aperture ( F8 would probably have been enough).

 

[puyjapin]

surely if you rely on AF for this type of shot you are at risk of the AF picking up the branches as stated? How would you make AF select the animal? or does the lower f stop meaqn the branches and animal may be in focus together?

 

[Mgw189]

Smaller Fstop will help with DOF. As for focus you should be able to select the way your camera focuses. I usually change mine so that the it always chooses the zone in the center of my view finder. I pick what I want to focus on usually the eyes hold the shutter release down once focused and recompose the image.

 

[trades2cash]

I just wanted to thank everyone for the tips and comments. I find them very useful. Also, Overread i find what you say about manual focusing on the dslr to be very true. Since I am just starting out I am trying every aspect and feature I can. I decided that i needed to get use to the manual focus and I have had some great shots and some bad shots. Its seems like if the composition is simple I can get sharp manual focus but like on the picture above it is very hard for me to tell through the viewfinder if the focus is right. Thanks once again everyone signed....Randall

 

[Overread]

yep 0 if you set your AF so that only the middle point is active as Mgw189 said, you can then determin where the focus should be in a shot - though its a bit limiting on composition it is one of the better options for wildlife since the camera is faster than the human hand

 

[TheUndisputed]

Is that a Tamron lens?