Photo notebook

I have been obsessing a little over sharpness recently. While my most used lens is not the sharpest (at the moment that’s the Nikon Z 180mm-600mm f5.6-6.3), I have some obtained some very sharp results with it in good light.

I go on about the challenges of shooting fast moving subjects in poor light blah blah blah, but there are various reasons that make getting pin-sharp results harder.

Having said that, I still want to get the best results I can when the need arises, although many of my favourite shots are far from sharp; but for some wildlife images that is what I am attempting to get to prove to myself that I know how to do it. The example below is well off what I want.

The shot of the Tīeke was in harsh bright light, the subject was roughly 4 or 5 metres away from me. I was sure I was nailing some keepers, but on getting home most shots:

• missed the eye repeatedly. To be fair, it was feeding in a tree with a lot of leaves and twigs to interfere, so I was trying to avoid reacquiring focus too often.
• were exposed poorly. I forgot to change to spot metering.
• may have been less well defined due to the shutter speed being too slow. Given the light I could have gone up considerably.

But most importantly, I realised that at the maximum aperture of f6.3 at 600mm I had 2mm DoF. I knew I was working on limited DoF with the longer focal lengths, but seeing how shallow it was, was a surprise. Even at f11 at 600mm I would only get 3mm.

Ansel is fantastic photo editing software which is a recent discovery for me. It is a fork of Darktable, and is similar in many ways, but, the UI has been considerably simplified. The maintainer has removed many of the duplicate modules and the result is a far simpler and easier to use version of Darktable.

Darktable has perhaps been a little too permissive with allowing new features. I do like it, but I find it completely overwhelming. I would often fluke an OK result, and when editing something a few weeks later be at a loss to remember which modules I had used.

While Darktable is a very powerful tool for advanced users, and not designed to be as simple to use as Lightroom, it is extremely intimidating for newbies or infrequent users. Coupled with a general dislike of post-production work on my photos, I started to realise that Darktable’s complexity making me reluctant to edit my photos.

While searching for an alternative to Darktable I came across Ansel.

Ansel has been a revelation for me, and I don’t just enjoy using it, I love using it.

Even though Ansel’s UI is much cleaner than Darktable, if I had not watched a few explainer YouTubes by Aurélien Pierre first I would have struggled.

Like Darktable, Ansel is incredibly powerful and has features that I am unlikely to ever use — I prefer shots as close to how they come out of the camera. My recent need to edit is due to shooting small fast moving targets in poor light, requiring high shutter speeds and high ISO, resulting in images that are either well under exposed or noisy, or both.

Ansel is alpha software and comes with the usual warnings, but so far with my simple needs it’s been stable and requires very few workarounds.

A couple of happy accidents yesterday.

While I need to be mindful of metering, after a number of BIF sessions with Wide Area Large and a lot of shots in focus, I was blown away. The AF was picking up the bird well, I was amazed.

This was also the longest I have spent in one spot, close to 90 minutes, which gave me a good sense for which animals were doing what and some of the patterns.

Wide area large (WAL) on the Nikon Z6

This was the first time I tried using WAL for an extended period, and I was impressed. My expectations were set that Wide Area Small (WAS) was the better bet for bird in flight photography. I examined the results from seven bursts with WAL and two with WAS.

The light conditions were bright, backlit, with misty rain that was enough to really mislead the AF a few times, but overall the light was magic, and even with the haze and droplets between the lens and the subject it was refreshing to be shooting in relatively bright light for a change.

From five of the WAL bursts I got an in-focus rate of 59%, and the two bursts of WAS I got 69% rate. This is by no means scientific as the two WAS bursts were towards the end when my technique and discipline had improved.

I eliminated two of the WAL bursts that had 25% in focus rate due to user error in one, and a very busy background on the other.

I can see why WAS is generally the way to go, but that WAL is worth using if the background is not too busy.

Mindset: Track – Acquire Focus – Shoot

I started to shift my mindset to Track / Acquire / Shoot: tracking to allow the camera time to acquire focus and then shoot, a process that takes a second or so. It’s part of the technique that I need to work on.

Focus between shots

Reviewing the shots there were a number where focus slipped for a frame but was sharp either side.

Conclusions, things to change

• Focus limiter – work on a technique to change it if needed
• Metering – I was in spot metering the entire time, which is almost hopeless for BIF shots
• Shutter speed – on a couple of occasions outside of the bursts above I was in a slow shutter speed. If used intentionally it could be quite effective.

Shortcuts to consider on the camera:

• change metering – on the i menu
• change AF speed – on the i menu
• need a dedicated BIF setting on the camera, U2 or U3 could be repurposed for this

Sample images – screencaptured and unedited jpg files

This morning I missed a lot of opportunities and missed shots, all because I did not alter my settings more frequently or dramatically enough.

I consider the photography I do at the moment as training or practice, and like training for something (like a long ride or a run), so I can be ready for when something remarkable happens. I need to be using these opportunities to get way more comfortable changing and checking my settings.

Yesterday I got the opportunity to photograph Kererū that were sitting beyond the canopy in decent light. It was quite the revelation, and it gave me a boost in terms of my confidence.

Shooting in the light with slower targets made for a pleasant change, with much higher keeper rates than I’ve had recently, and even a few satisfying results.

Recently it has been rare for me to get the auto ISO below 9000, as the high shutter speeds I need have pushed that right up resulting in a fair bit of noise and lost detail and very underexposed images.

These conditions were a lot easier for the combo of the Z6 and the 180-600mm to shine. In the better light conditions focus was snappy.

The weather while I was out walking at Ōtari was pretty damp and cold so there wasn’t much activity until I was leaving when the light improved and the wildlife appeared and I got these shots.