Hi I'm Charl from Pangolin Photo Safaris and today I'm here in Chobe National Park
on The Chobe River at one of the locations we are at is Kwalizi - we know it as Elephant Bay.
If you look right behind me there are a few buffaloes. Just look. How beautiful is that?
So in this video, I would like to discuss with you a few
common mistakes that I see people make on safari. I will discuss some mistakes
and how to avoid them.
Ok, so my mistake number 1 is one that I actually made just very recently.
A very bad rookie mistake and I've shot in JPEG and actually by accident. Somehow
I must have touched my screen and changed the RAW into Jpeg.
Luckily for me the exposure was spot-on. It was perfect.
So I could retrieve the shadows and the highlights. There was not much that I
lost so that was lucku on my side. But I've seen so many times people choose to
shoot JPEG. I've made these mistakes years back and also shot a lot in JPEG and
the reason for me was about space. I wanted to save space. I thought I don't
need RAW. The camera's doing a good enough job. Today I regret that. I'm looking back at
a lot of my other photos, my older photos and I wish I shot RAW so that
I could edit it so much better. Your dynamic range in your pictures is so
much wider. Your shadows. You can pull your shadow so much better. Your highlights.
If you by accident overexposed or underexposed too much on your image. In you're
shooting RAW you can retrieve that. But is you're shooting in JPEG that is very
difficult. Your camera is compressing that file so that it would be difficult for
you to save that image. So I highly recommend that you shoot RAW. Even if you're
somebody that just started photography and you're just not sure
what to do. I would recommend shooting RAW. Shoot RAW and JPEG. At a later stage if
you think this is not for you can always erase the RAW file. But if you decide
that later this is what I want to do and I love it, you have the RAW file
so you can later when your editing starts to get better and you
understand your editing program. You can then use these images and you can then
edit them so much better.
Shoot RAW!
So my second point or mistake that I
want to discuss is I often see its people shoot on full auto (automatic)
"I'm gonna switch on full auto" and they fire away. The problem with
this is you have absolutely no control over what your camera decide what it wants to do.
Your camera doesn't know you want to take a picture of that bird in flight or
the elephant comes and drinks water. It doesn't know what shutter speed you need or what
depth of field you need. So if you put your camera on Auto you have no control
what the cameras deciding. So if your camera's doing a reading and it's
overexposed or underexposed the camera doesn't know that. So it is
important to try and teach yourself at least one of the other exposure settings.
Either aperture priority, shutter speed priority or even Manual with Auto ISO.
Then something that you can use with that that will make a big difference in
your photography is using exposure compensation. So either if you are shooting
aperture priority or shutter speed priority you may have control of your
shutter speed or your depth of field. At least if your camera is reading your
picture and it's a little bit overexposed or underexposed you can
still use exposure compensation and tell your camera to add a little bit of
light take a little bit of light away. So please and try and shoot in one of
those modes.
Look at the beautiful elephant's right behind me and this is
why we actually call this place Elephant Bay. It's a very popular place for
elephants to come down and have a drink of water.
So the next thing I've noticed people are too afraid to crank up the ISOs.
If your ISO is too low probably gonna be that your shutter speed
is too slow as well. Now in wildlife photography it's extremely crucial to
have fast shutter speeds. For example here behind me I see the elephant's drinking.
Now if they lift up their trunks, they're putting the water in the mouth,
droplets are falling. You need a fast shutter speed to freeze that .The water
droplets will fall and if you want them crisp and clean you need a shutter speed
around 1/2500s. So to have that fast shutter speed you're
probably going to have to push up your ISO. If you're going to keep your ISO at
all the time around 100 and 400 during the whole day you're not
gonna have that fast shutter speed. Maybe in the middle of the day when you
have a lot of Sun you will have it. But in the most beautiful time of the day -
that early morning light, late afternoon. You can't shoot with those low ISOs.
Your shutter speed will be too slow. You have birds in flight or action is
happening for example here in the water hippos are fighting or playing. There's a
a lot of action, movement. If you want to freeze those moments you need a fast
shutter speed and to have a fast shutter speed in most cases you're
gonna have to put up your ISO. So don't be afraid to put up your ISOs
The cameras of these days, all the sensors are quite good. The technology is there
you can easily shoot the 1000 to 2000 ISOs.....should not be any problem, any camera.
Mirrorless, DSLRs they are all really good should be able to
handle those. It's so much easier to work on a noisy image and do noise reduction
than to have an image that's not sharp just because your ISO is too low and
you have movement in your image or a blurry image or motion blur image.
So another point is composition. So often I look at people's photos on safari and
I realise how often we make mistakes with composition. I think the easiest
is always to put your subject in the middle. But what I see people do is they
will be, for example, a lion and they will take 20, 30, 40 photos of that lion
exactly all the same 40 photos lion in the middle of the frame.
So with the composition, I guess there's a lot of rules where you can do and the ways of
doing it. But the easiest way is for you to just change your framing a little bit.
Do that lion maybe a little bit on the left. Use rules of thirds.
A little bit on the left .Little bit on the right. Play with your horizon. Put a
little bit third on the top. Third on the bottom. Also when you take your pictures,
I've seen too often, people take a beautiful photo of an elephant drinking water,
for example, and I cut off the legs. You have all this space on top of the
sky, elephant beautifully focussed on the eye. Nicely done but then they cut off the legs.
Or with a bird, the Darter is sitting on a branch. Focusing on the eye.
The beak beautifully in focus and then they cut off the tail.
So you use a little bit the Rule of Thirds
Move that focus point of yours to the left, to your right, bottom
or to the top. So that you don't put your subject the whole time in the
centre of your frame.
One mistake that cost me a few shots in the past is
forgetting to put your settings back to default.
How often has it happen that you've been at a sighting? You've set your camera
to specific settings. You finish with that sighting. You move on. You come to the
next sighting. Pick up your camera and start shooting and it was completely wrong.
The focus points were in the wrong area. You were still underexposed by 3 or 4 stops.
Shutter speed was not fast enough and you destroyed your image. I have done
it a few times and I've seen it so often happen that people forget to do that.
So I recommend that you try to make a habit out of it after your sighting or when
you've been shooting. Before you put down your camera look at your settings.
Maybe do a default setting. I would recommend an action setting that I like to use
with my camera on 1/2500s shutter speed, f8, I put my
exposure compensation around zero or -1/3. So if something suddenly happens
I can pick up my camera and shoot and now I will be quite accurate or I'll
have enough, good enough setting to be able to capture this action or photo that I want.
So these are the most common mistakes that I've observed. If you have
any mistakes that you've recently made or are still making please leave it in the
comments down below. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
pressing the bell button and I hope to see you soon.