Safari Lesson, Shooting Auto ISO
I am a Manual Settings photographer. When you work in a Studio with controlled lighting it works well. Even on a portrait shoot outdoors it suits me. When I do landscapes and try to be deliberate and you have time to shift your exposure by simply increasing your shutter speed or by changing your aperture it also works well. Actually it is kinda a must, you slow down, your in control.
I even shot Water-sports; surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing and more recently wing-boarding in manual mode. Maybe also because my shooting experience dates back into the 80’s and shooting slide film required exact exposure. Even with the introduction of digital DSLR’s exposure was critical. Nowadays cameras, regardless of the manufacturer are quite sophisticated and provide excellent metering and exposure compensation options. Also high ISO shooting is less of an issue, most camera brands let you shoot up ISO 6400 with good and usable results. Let’s go to Africa! That is what I did late last December…
After a couple of days of game drives in the Chobe National Park with Pangolin Safari shooting in manual mode proved to be cumbersome and tiring. The local guides suggested an alternative method, so I tried it and things became easier.
Most of your shooting on a game drive, even on the boats on the Chobe River required a relatively long focal length lens. I mostly used a Fujinon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 on a newly acquired Fujifilm XT-5. For animals far-of in the distance, or small birds, I would often add a 1.4 teleconverter. My colleagues on these drives would be equipped with similar focal lengths by Sony and Nikon as well as 200-400mm f/4’s with a built-in 1.4 teleconverter or even a fixed focal length 400mm lens.
So I set the camera aperture to 4.5 or 5.6 and kept the shutter speed at 1/250 to about 1/1000 of a sec. for stationary subjects. Birds in flight, or diving into the water to catch fish required a much higher shutter speed of at least 1/2500 of a sec. or faster. Same holds true for running game or big cats.
The Solution, Auto ISO:
So I dove into the Menu, I set up Auto- ISO between a native default Sensitivity of 125 at the low end and ISO 6400 on the high end. The Minimum Shutter Speed is set Auto, allowing me to change shutter speed on and exterior dial, since I shoot on a Fuji XT-5. I could shoot at first light and for the rest of a game drive, only manipulating the shutter speed dial until it was time to pack up and head home to the lodge for a late breakfast. For fast moving subjects the sun light was an essential requirement. Without it shots turned out to be blurry (too low a shutter speed), and even stationary subjects looked dull at best, without reflected light.
On the up-side of this technique you cold lift the camera lens combination to your eye and fire away. Exposure compensation was adjusted in accordance with the relative brightness of the subject against its backdrop. For a Cattle Egret flying against a bright blue sky you would probably underexpose by at least 2/3’s of a F-stop or for a wet Elephant, that just crossed a river dripping wet and dark skinned you may want to overexpose at least 2/3’s of a F-Stop. The Fuji XT-5, like all its predecessors does have an Exposure Compensation Dial on its top plate on the right hand side. This is an easy adjustment and it’s an elegant solution to manage the final exposure of a picture. Our guides Pusetso and Sabine called out these exposure compensation figures to us, so we would remember to change our camera settings, both of them did so regularly and very accurately!
Most other camera makes have similar, although slightly differently implemented exposure compensation dials or buttons. So it’s up to you to familiarize yourself with the options you have with your camera. Give it a try it’s well worth it.
In the end I had a better success rate using this technique and it allowed me to concentrate more on composition and focus placement. Especially in tight groups of animals where the animal tracking at times got confused and I had to make the selection.
In the Gallery to follow this article I will add the Camera settings as well as the Exposure compensation figures to demonstrate this technique!
