Shooting wildlife with Nikon DF: you can see it, but it can’t see you?

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Most of my work is shooting in American nature preserves, on expeditions describing the nature of different regions. Photos should be created to tell a story of landscapes, plants and animals, with environmental education elements. It should not be just beautiful foggy or beautifully blurred pictures, but certainly recognizable species, which will be transferred typical representatives of natural zones of the country.

Master class by nature photographer Andrian KOLOTILIN

You can’t change the place where you meet wildlife. The meeting took place. On the basis of its results Andrian Kolotilin found a like-minded person.

Photos should be prepared not only for publishing on the Internet, but also for printing in magazines, for displaying at photo exhibitions in large format, which means they should be of high quality. I made sure to use wide-angle lenses, macro lenses, and of course my big TVs for the animals and birds. All this equipment is to be carried in backpacks, on cross-country vehicles, snowmobiles, motor boats, etc. The equipment should have high reliability, because sometimes getting to the shooting area involves days of hard work for many people, and overcoming difficult terrain.

The hardest part of the job in America is wildlife spotting, not in abstract conditions, but in specific territory. The behavior of living things is hard to predict, sometimes it’s just a moment that can never be repeated.

Spawning crucian carp move underwater and come to the surface for a second, making noise, foaming the water. I used an AF-S Nikkor 500 1:4 G long focal length lens in conjunction with a TC 17EII converter. It achieves the necessary closeness to the subject, with a minimum focus distance of just over 3 meters. The subject itself calls for an AF-C tracking focus.

Let’s make a mental composition beforehand and choose not the central but the point of focus shifted to the left, but not the outermost one. The furthest focus point is always notable for its reduced precision and speed, which had to be taken into account in this case. Since the subject is in the water, we need to set the camera as low as possible to the water’s edge, on a tripod. We didn’t lock the tripod head and always held the camera with our hands so it wouldn’t accidentally fall off.

The shutter speed had to be fast enough to freeze the water, and the shots were taken in series, at 5.5 frames per second, in short bursts of two to four frames each. It’s worth doing so in order to then choose the best phase of the object’s movement, but at the same time not to overflow the memory buffer, so that the camera is always ready for a new jump of a fish.

Photo 1. Crucian carp spawning.

AF-S Nikkor 500 1:4 G ED lens plus TC-17EII converter, ISO 1600, shutter speed 1/2000 s, aperture f/11 for depth of field.

Picture 1-2 was taken without the tracking focus system.

The situation when using auto focus is quite different for shooting intimidating subjects from concealment. The Far Eastern stork is an endangered bird that is under international protection, and its photographing is done under the compulsory control of scientists. Nesting disturbance must be completely eliminated. The shots were taken through a cluster of branches in the foreground, from a special tent set up in advance. the camera stayed in a tent in the wilderness for several days, the photographer went in and out of the shelter under the cover of the night. the camera and its optics were subjected to temperature changes of about 30 degrees a day and to natural dew fallout.

In such conditions automatic focusing is impossible or inaccurate. I was able to get a good focus on the bird’s eye, thanks to the Live View system with full magnification of the image area. We shot in a short burst, so we could stop the blurring at such a long focal length. Not the first, but the second or third shot in the sequence.

Photo 2. Far Eastern storks on the nest.

AF-S Nikkor 500 1:4 G ED lens plus TC-20EII converter, ISO 800, shutter speed 1/2000 s, aperture f/9.

You were previously told to take pictures of insects at a lower sensitivity to preserve the smallest detail. This imposed certain difficulties, it was necessary to shoot shy objects early in the morning, from a tripod, when butterflies are in a kind of anabiosis.

The picture quality at high sensitivity is now so good that you can take pictures at any sensitivity, but choose the lowest possible. In order to eliminate vibrations, it is advisable to use a tripod, but this might scare away the rare butterfly.

So if your lens has optical stabilization, you should definitely use it. And to shoot in series, holding your breath for a while. Then, on the computer, select the shot where the wing scales came out without the double outline.

Photo 3. Machaon Maak, endemic of the Far East.

AF-S Nikkor 70-200 1:4 G ED, ISO 640, shutter speed 1/125 s, aperture f/5.6.

To make a landscape survey of the Amur River bed from height we had to climb up the dilapidated survey tower early in the morning, while the air was still clear and streams of vapor from the water space did not distort the distant plans. The main factor was the compactness and low weight of the equipment. Long lens made it possible to compress the distance and capture the foothills of the Sikhote Alin, the Amur River and the Gorin River estuary.

Photo 4.The landscape of the Amur region.

AF-S Nikkor 70-200 1:4 G ED lens, ISO 400, shutter speed 1/200 s, aperture f/11.

Photo 4-1. Forest in the Amur Region

Photo 4-2. The Amur River

Nikon Df has no automatic panorama capture and stitching capability. But such necessity in shooting natural landscapes arises very often, and the results of high resolution are in demand for polygraphy and electronic travel guides, virtual guides. After turning off the auto focus and setting the exposure mode to manual, I took a series of shots. With the help of a graphic editor I assembled the panorama from five original frames.

Photo5.Panorama

AF-S Nikkor 70-200 1:4 G ED lens, ISO 400, shutter speed 1/320 s, aperture f/9.

Photo 5-1. Panorama

I was shooting in complete darkness, in an abandoned Gulag tunnel that I found in the taiga, and I had to light the underground with two headlamps, one of which I put behind the turn of the rock dungeon. From this main source I experimentally determined the exposure. I was able to set the record shutter speed with a simple mechanical release button control cable. My hands remained free in the dungeon and I used a second flashlight, like a brush, to work out the foreground.

Photo 6. The adit.

AF-S Nikkor 16-35 1:4 G ED lens, ISO 400, shutter speed 130s, aperture f/22 for depth of field, contrast reduction with graphics editor.

Photographing small birds at close range with the long lens has its own peculiarities. The depth of field in this situation is so shallow that if you just aim at the center area the picture will be ruined. The wing feathers are sharp, but the eye is in the blur zone. You have to move the camera a little, focusing exactly on the eyes, and close the aperture a little.

Photo 7. The brown thrush, representative of the bird world of the Far East.

AF-S Nikkor 500 1:4 G ED lens plus TC-17EII converter, ISO 1000, shutter speed 1/320 s, aperture f/11 to increase depth of field .

Super wide-angle optics for landscape photography can be used if it is necessary to show the foreground objects in the frame or to avoid a foreground void. Wide angle lens is especially useful in the forest to avoid the chaos of overlapping vines and trunks of the wild forest and to emphasize the important part of the story. In the case when you want to express the movement of the water, it is worth using the lowest possible sensitivity. And of course, provide long shutter speeds to make the water jets look realistic.

If you set the polarizing filter, it helps control the shine of the moisture and the reflection of the sky on the foliage, and at the same time slightly increases the shutter speed.

Photo 7-1. Stream in a wet rain forest.

AF-S Nikkor 16-35 1:4 G ED lens, ISO 100, shutter speed 8 s, aperture f/22 to achieve long shutter speeds.

Of course, I used a good tripod, and instead of the cable, I used a mirror pre-lift and an adjustable 5 second release delay. You could have used a cable, but sometimes it takes longer to get the right gear out of the backpack than the simpler solution.

The same technique was used for landscapes. This narrow strip of forest has a specific name and is found specifically in the Amur Region. You could show the sparse woods only in the backlight, and to avoid the emptiness in the foreground, I used a wide angle lens.

Picture 7-2. A rye tree, a narrow strip of far-eastern forest.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70 1:2.8 G ED lens, ISO 800, shutter speed 1/15 s, aperture f/20 for sharp foreground.

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