hey what's up it's Jerad with Ditch Auto and I've got another challenge for you
this month we are going to be challenged to take photos of pets now pets are an
interesting thing whether you have them or not you probably know somebody who
has a pet maybe it's a pet that you enjoy spending time with when you're
visiting that person but a lot of us do have pets whether it's a dog or a cat or
a bird or a fish or something like that our pets are interesting creatures some
of them are fast moving some of them are not and they have personalities of their
own and so it's fun to be able to capture those things I take a lot of
pictures of my dog because my dog interacts with my kids a lot my kids
love the dog like I've kind of grown to love the dog and it's just interesting
you know when we first got the puppy it was super cute and of course he's a
little more grown and annoying now but when he was a puppy he was super cute
and I wanted to take pictures and kind of document the dog's life and so we
started an Instagram account for the dog which I haven't really been posting
pictures to probably for like the last six months but nonetheless we were
taking a lot of pictures of the dog especially with my kids so as you're
thinking about taking pictures of a pet this this month whether it be your pet
or somebody else's pet or maybe you're gonna challenge yourself to go and do
some pet photography for someone maybe even on a professional level I want you
to think about a couple of these things I have some tips for you to kind of help
you get better photos out of your pets or your friends pets now typically if
you're thinking about a dog or a cat or some sort of animal that's typically on
the move they move fast I mean it's hard to take pictures of a dog especially if
it's a squirrely dog that's running around and hyperactive kind of like my
dog is sometimes unless the dogs worn out and it's just ready to chill
um chances are it's gonna want to run to you or to someone else in the vicinity
so I recommend using a longer lens of maybe more of a telephoto lens and using
a zoom lens sometimes comes in handy here because then you can zoom in and
out you can get in real close to the dog if the dog starts to move or the cat
or whatever animal you can zoom out a little wider when they get closer
using a prime lens like what I have on this camera right here the 85 millimeter
is a fantastic lens to get some really cool shallow depth of field shots maybe
with some really beautiful bokeh in the background or something like that
but it means that I have to run around and move a lot more in order to get the
shots that I want of the animal using a prime lens you don't have any zoom so
your zoom essentially becomes your feet here moving around trying to get those
shots and kind of compose the shot you're looking for where a zoom lens
allows you a little bit more flexibility so not to say that one is better than
the other it's just a kind of thought to have when you're thinking about what
you're gonna be shooting a dog or cat or animal that you're going to be
photographing it's temperaments and all that stuff I would also use continuous
autofocus like continuous autofocus is going to be your friend on your camera
for me I typically have my camera set up with back button focus and back button
focus means that when I push that button down focus is running continuously I
don't necessarily have to make any changes in my camera to to do anything
different I'm just as long as I'm pressing down this button autofocus is
running so turn on AF C potentially autofocus continuous on your camera
that's another way of doing it and if you're on a Canon typically turning the
AI servo on or the servo on is an option there for your continuous autofocus that
single shot focus isn't going to work for an animal that's running around
because your focus point is gonna be moving your subject is gonna be moving
quite often and so you need that auto focus or that continuous auto focus
there to help you maintain focus on your subject I also recommend taking a burst
of photos rather than just shooting one here at a time a lot of people will just
shoot one photo here and there look at their photo and say I didn't get the
shot with animals children anything that's fast-moving that you can't really
control that well taking a burst of photos at a time is gonna give you a
much better chance of getting a good photo don't be afraid to take 30 or 40
in a burst and take one of those as a good shot or even you might miss all of
them I mean you're gonna miss any opportunities that you don't try and
shoot so if you put bursts on and try and follow the animal around especially
with continuous auto focus on trying to get that shot I mean they may be
blinking their tongue maybe hanging out weird something might be weird about the
photo but then just a split second later it could be perfect and if you're
worrying about taking a photo and looking at it and taking a photo and
looking at it you're not gonna get that shot I recommend using a burst mode on
your camera especially if your camera has a high frame rate burst I would
recommend using that like on this a 7r3 that I have right here very fast burst
on the on the capture rate so I can get lots of shots and hopefully get that
perfect one you're also most likely going to want to freeze the action
especially like I said earlier we have some hyperactive pets out there that are
moving around fast and you want to be able to freeze the action because if
they're moving and you're trying to follow them it's very hard to actually
maintain sharp image when you capture it if your shutter speed is too slow so
you're going to want to increase your shutter speed I recommend going up to
maybe like one five hundred one eight hundredths of a second if it's a really
fast moving animal maybe they're jumping you're trying to capture a dog jumping
or a cat jumping from one thing to the other you're probably gonna want to
increase that even more maybe up to one one thousandth of a second on your
shutter speed which means that if you're in a lighting situation that isn't
extremely bright like outdoors you're gonna have to open up the aperture on
your lens as wide as possible and maybe increase that ISO a bit as well just
don't increase it so much that you end up getting too noisy of a photo to use
obviously some cameras are better in low light than others so but I do recommend
with fast-moving pets increase that shutter speed a bit so that you freeze
some of that action my last tip for photographing pets is just to be safe
not only for you but keep the pets safe as well it's really easy for us to want
to get these perfect shots that are set up in a certain way so you take your pet
out to somewhere to take a photo you want to make sure that you're being safe
that if you out in a public place that you keep your
pet leash or at least you are in a place where you're aware of any other animals
that are in the area you just really want to be safe and make sure that your
animal doesn't become potentially harmed in the process or some other animal
harmed especially maybe if your dog or cat or animal or whatever is a little
bit more aggressive so just be careful be safe be aware of your environment and
have fun in this month's challenge make sure that you head on over to the
Facebook group link is down in the description below and the Facebook group
is where you're gonna want to go and upload your photos that you take
share your thoughts comment on other photos ask for critiques on your photos
advice whatever all that good stuff share your settings share a little bit
of the story behind your photo tell us a little bit about it we love to interact
with your photos and everybody that's in the group there's almost 4,000 people in
the group now at the time that I'm filming this it's a great community of
people around the topic of photography taking part in these challenges every
month with you if you want to learn more on how to get out of automatic mode and
start shooting in manual mode using some of these things I was talking about like
adjusting your shutter speed check out my ditch auto course it's a free course
that teaches you how to get out of automatic mode and start shooting in
manual it's definitely gonna help out a lot when shooting these pet photos so
that's gonna do it for today's video if you like this video click the thumbs up
and also subscribe to ditch auto here on YouTube so that you can get updated when
we put out new videos until next time have fun shooting and we'll see in the
Facebook group take care