welcome back everybody today's video is long overdue
over 100 videos ago we did a video on action photography only we didn't do action in kind of
real life because it was the middle of lockdown so i was going to say you guys have been pestering me
i don't mean like that you've been reminding me basically that we need to do this
and therefore here we are today is the day so we have just pulled up at the location usually we get
into a good position before we start filming and i just kind of want to run through the difference
with this video versus the last video before we go ahead and walk so the last video that
we did was sat in the office at home right and sitting at home in the office is absolutely fine
but there's no practical element of that however the theory in that video is still
true and correct and i know loads of people say well i don't do it like that i've not been taught
like that that's fine this method has worked for tens of thousands of people legitimately
and therefore i'm confident in it and its ability to be taught out and that's why we do it
so that being said we are going to be covering the situation in practicality and that's why i'm going
to be bringing and using with us today the screen everybody always drops comments in what is the
screen well guys the screen literally just records my settings in the camera that's all it does don't
use it unless we're recording so we're going to go head out and utilize the knowledge that we learn
in the theory section if you have not watched that first video it is worth a watch i know i'm
saying that as me but i think it is worth a watch so go ahead and watch that we will link it above
oh during me
so we've got bryt with us we're going to go and head into one of my favourite woodland locations
to find a track that we can use for action photography we are going to be in a woodland
this is easier to do a lot easier to do outside in a kind of an open space so just remember that
we are going to be using a sony a7r lll today and we're going to be using the uh sony gm135 1.8 lens
because it is super fast i've already discussed this lens before i will link uh to that video
above as well all of the links to everything that i've got here it will be in the description below
but yeah we're going to be using this kit it doesn't matter what camera you have but as
the previous video on this topic has already said you will get a higher hit rate the more
expensive professional your camera is however even if you've got the best camera body in the world
your hit rate is very very rarely going to be 100% of all shots taken
so just bare that in mind i'm not going to go through the merits of individual cameras
we are going to go find location and then go and set up
good
doo doo doo doo okay so we're at a really good track to use just to start kind of like get the
ball rolling so what we're going to do here is we're going to set up our cameras and take our
first shots now this track and this whole woodland in the uk in general is absolutely
soaking wet at the moment so it's quite muddy and there is a muddy patch kind of halfway through
which isn't ideal but we're going to see if we can work with it either shooting that way or that way
we'll get to that in a second the first thing we need to do is set up
our cameras for shooting action so just going to drop some weight that i put on in lockdown
we need to make sure that we're on auto focus on the lens and make sure that we're basically
using our lenses properly you can do this with any lens but the best lenses tend to be
fast lenses and sport lenses so 70 to 200 is usually your best bet
in this instance this is actually slightly faster than the sony gm 70 200 so you can use that instead
okay so you guys should be able to see this screen now so let me just go ahead and focus on something
off into the distance so you can see what i can see we've got some pretty basic settings up on
the screen at the moment what we're working with is 1 250th of a second F2.8 and iso 500. i need
to make sure that i've got a action shutter speed so i'm looking at personally anything
over 1/1250th of a second with my dogs sometimes more than that so in this instance i'm going to
put that up to 1250th of a second and looking at our histogram we can see that we are underexposed
i shoot in full manual shooting full manual all of the time because i get more control so what
i'm going to do is just to make sure that we've got some more light coming in so i could either
drop my f number which is a viable option on this lens because it goes to 1.8 i'm going to leave it
at 2.8 at the moment because most most of you guys will have 2.8 lens and i'm going to go for iso
1000 maybe 1000 is good a thousand will be fine with a black dog coming
through there and what we can try and do is utilize the lighter areas of the track
if that makes sense that's really just the tip of the iceberg what we need to do is
go through all of our other settings all of them are detailed in that previous video
but i'm just going to make sure that we are all there and ready to go so afc yes so our
drive mode wants to be on high or high plus so it's like a burst mode if we take multiple shots
in quick succession and then what we also want to make sure basically is that we personally i use
single point focus usually on small or medium for action and that is across every single camera make
and model so again you might do it a different way that's fine this is just the way that works best
for us so then what we want to do is if you've got eye autofocus you want to make sure that that is
on and that it's set to animal eye autofocus then you want to make sure that your tracking
sensitivity is super high unless you are bad at aiming in which case go for probably a standard or
uh four on that kind of a scale so yours might be different just work with it okay
you also want to make sure if your lens uses image stabilization if you're shooting action you want
image stabilization off not on because the camera will see the movement in it and try to correct
it we don't want that we want the movement to be captured as we're capturing it i hope that makes
sense just keep it off image stabilization for when we're shooting so uh with all of our settings
all set up it is time now to introduce a dog and gosh it's been a long time since i've done this so
we'll see how it goes uh are you are we just yeah okay okay so we're gonna basically
uh position ourselves so we're gonna catch her in action on the ridgey bit now you guys might not
be able to see the ridge a bit but it's underneath the tree that's kind of leaning over the top i'll
put a pin on that um so that's what we're going to do we're going to be on the floor somewhere around
this general vicinity we'll just do some flat running ones first and then maybe we'll introduce
some form of a branch because bryt is old enough to go over small objects and therefore we can do
the like jumping in the air one if we want to make sure that i've got her a reasonable size
actually i'm probably a little bit too far away at this stage but the exposure is looking great
i mean she's so freaking cute for action shots you're best off using your center points because
they're usually faster dslr's on mirrorless cameras doesn't really matter but whatever
your personal preference is it's fine um so i'll shuffle forward silent the tree i know beady
so as always we'll be lying straight on the floor so we've got this amazing angle
beanie's there looking all glorious is make sure that we can move our focus point around and nice
and easily i want dan to go ahead and put her in a sit and wait walk past me and then recall her
so you can see that beanie is going to come running up to this mound this peak
that we've got here and when she's coming over we will get our best chance so what
i'm going to do is get my focus point lined up hold down my earphone and wait
i'm using backbone focus but it doesn't matter and i'm going to track her okay
that was really bad for me okay so i'm going to try and do a much better job of tracking her here
that was not good from me she's a little bit low on that ridge
so keep your arms and wrists nice and loose nice and loose nice and loose when you're ready dan
okay okay so do you see how i'm like i'm moving myself to track her i'm not letting the camera
make that decision it's gonna have a really quick look remember what i said about hit rates
so she could do running a little bit straighter if we're being honest and that's our shot
perfect go on okay wow good girl so i'm only releasing two or three shots a time and i'm
making those shots really count that's another one perfect let's go and look at a different location
and try something different deary me i'm getting old okay so basically i've been left in charge of
the camera which is just not safe or appropriate so we've literally just moved here from
there and what we're going to do is dan's going to hold beanie as though she's a client dog that
cannot be doing weights and stuff so he's going to hold her about there really to be honest where
she is so they're there but we've got that log dan is going to hold to the dog when i say go
he lets her go i make loads of noise and she runs directly to me beanie is going to
pop over the top of this log now i need to be ready for that something i would lift up
slightly just so i can grab the focus now as soon as dan lets bryt go dan's going to dive
probably that way i've got a squeaky ball in my hand which she now knows i have
ready go yay see what we're working with here that's looking good
oh beanie yeah so i just flicked through those beanies done for the day she's done a super job
do that you'll get a sharp action photo and everything will be fine so the main thing to
remember about action photography really is that it is next to impossible to get a 100% hit rate
those of us who do often have super expensive cameras main thing is to practice
just keep practicing you can never practice too much at something like this i'm very rusty
the last time i did action when dan was the last time i did action photography
but this is a skill that everybody should know because it's all about the theory and as soon
as you learn theory you can apply it to anything that you need to within the field of photography
so with all said and done hope this video was helpful for you if it was please let me
know drop down some comments below make sure you subscribe and i'll see you all again really really
soon