Growing up dogs were always members of
our family
I adore their unconditional
companionship and I connect with their
ability to express and understand emotion.
That makes them great subjects for
photographs. Today we're going to spend
some time with man's best friend and
with one of our favorite cameras the
Sony a6300.
Our dog field day began with
Barney the Shih Tzu, a licensed therapy
dog with a number of talents including
dog agility courses.
He's been doing it for about a year but
he's climbed the ladder pretty quick and it
tops out at level 4 where he's done
pretty much all the apparatuses and he
just fell right in love with it like he
just absolutely loves this place and
when we pull up he just goes nuts.
If Barney is the little dog that can do
everything, the a6300 might be
considered the Barney of the camera
world. Featuring a 24 megapixel APS-C
sensor and a completely revamped 4D AF
system with 425 phase detection AF
points, the a6300 is capable of very
fast continuous shooting.
Ring it!
Good boy!
24 megapixels provides plenty
of detail and room for cropping.
Weave! Weave!
Good boy!
That happened a lot quicker than I expected.
The a6300 can capture full
resolution images and 11 frames per
second with continuous autofocus
allowing us to shoot quick bursts while
Barney worked on his hurdle routine.
This means we can pick the peak action
shot later on.
So we're going to have
Barney jump through the hoop see if we
can get perfectly clear shot of him right
there in the middle of it airborne.
Tire! Tire!
The camera's getting distracted by
the high-contrast blue-and-orange
objects in the background and the
strictly overhead light is making Barney
be in the shadows quite often. I'm just
getting a lot of back focused shots so we
want to get this great shot of Barney
midair in the middle of this hoop and
it's a little dark in here so we need a
bit more depth of field so we brought in
a couple of strobes and what I've got is
I've got my key here and then I've got
a fill bouncing off of this white
table so that it's not really harsh copy
stand lighting there's some soft light
and some hard light mixing in
Come on! Tunnel! Tire!
Haha!
After all the running and jumping our
talent was exhausted, so we decided to
break for lunch. Norm's is a dog friendly
bar and restaurant in Fremont Seattle
a good spot for some lowlight
family portraits.
Alright both of you guys look at the
camera ready... very nice!
Diced chicken or hamburger, which one?
Even at higher ISO sensitivity settings
JPEGs contain plenty of detail and the
a6300's autofocus performs well.
After lunch we said goodbye to Barney...
Thank you so much for having us
Barney, punch it!
Ata boy!
...and headed to a nearby park
with DPReview's four-legged friends Boddha
and Sticks to test the camera's
durability
It's in good working order
just a couple scratches on the paint
and the resolution of its 24 megapixel
sensor
Then it was time to play ball and give
the AF system a run for its money
Alright go ahead!
And we do mean run
This is a scenario where AF wide is for
the most part working very well at
picking the subject for me only
occasionally gets caught up by blades of
grass but as long as I am sure I've got
a solid lock on the dogs
it really does a great job of sticking
to her. Such a cutie
While the dogs were distracted by
the ball I was distracted by other things.
Monitor brightness. Sunny weather
Oh my goodness!
Oh man! Yes, yes yes yes!
Yeah, that was it!
So that was great because she went all
the way out to the side frame and it
stuck to her
I'm through and through a
dog person, although I love cats too and rats
I think they're all great pets
The a6300 can
shoot 4k video at up to 30 frames per
second and 1080p at up to 120 frames per
second for great-looking slow-motion
footage
This is some cold water alright alright
I'm ready
The a6300 is weather sealed which is handy
when you're working around wet dogs
Barney, Sticks and Boddha all have loving
homes but there are plenty of dogs that
aren't so fortunate. For our final photo
session we headed to the Motley Zoo a
local animal rescue organization to
shoot some portraits of dogs awaiting
adoption
I'm Jamie and this is Motley zoo animal
rescue this is our rock star treatment
dog daycare facility our animals are in
foster homes so we're not a traditional
shelter so it's a little bit different
and it's the first place of its kind.
Photos make all the difference in the
world because more than seventy-five
percent of the people that are looking
at the animals are looking online just
changing one photo can can make the
difference between the animal getting
adopted today or in three more weeks
We're going to see if we can help Jamie
find these dogs a home by capturing
some professional looking canine
portraits
So right now we're just getting the
background set up a little gray seamless
here to give a nice clean backdrop we've
got our TTL controller light here that
is gonna fire out and trigger the other
two lights and the cameras gonna take a
sort of meter reading on all lights on
and determine the explosions go flash
again for the actual exposure
This is Hugh Hefner
In TTL it's
trying to get even amount of exposure
between the light and that's fine but
it's just a little flat so I'm going to
actually play with the ratios a little
bit and try and make this light
overpower that light to give it a bit
more shape
There we go. In a perfect world of course you
wouldn't be in the shot but thankfully
we can retouch it out because aside from
that is a great shot I can lighten up
this shadow area a little bit really
make it nice
Now which one is he?
This is Archie
Aw, perfect
The dogs are getting a bit more
comfortable with the lights and I'm getting a
little more comfortable with the camera and
the lights myself so yeah I think we're
really starting to catch our groove now
Here are my top tips for taking
portraits of dogs:
Use off camera flash
A second light can help fill in harsh
shadows from the main light shoot from
the dog's eye level.
Finally, use sound
to get their attention
when in doubt... photo pig
While the lights were still setup we
took a quick portrait of Jamie the
shelter's owner for her social-media
Using the a6300's built-in Wi-Fi
I was able to send her a picture directly
from the camera via my phone
As we were
wrapping up we got a pleasant surprise
He's all ready!
Archie the Jack Russell
we just photographed found a new home
Satisfied with the camera and our shots
we said goodbye closing the book on an
excellent day with man's best friend
For DPReview I'm Sam Spencer
Hey Lou! I saw my name
Barney on the call sheet
something about agility training