Why do I find it so hard to take wild life photos?

Question

I have a Fuji Finepic camera with a 30x optical zoom, to take pictures of wild life, without having to have a huge great lens and adjust settings while the bird/butterfly flies away. But whatever I do, it seems:
The camera will focus on the leaves in the background, not the flower in the foreground.
It focusses on the tree, not the bird sitting there (mind you this is often the bird's fault for not posing nicely).
Or it refuses to focus on anything when using the zoom lens.

Yelllow flowers loose all detail.
Pink/purple/blue flowers have the colour distorted.

Some say that this is true for most digital cameras.

What can I do to improve my photos?

Answer 1

No, that is not true for most digital cameras. It is true for most digital camera USERS.



In 99% of the time, focus problems are because the user is not controlling where the camera focuses. If you are leaving the camera to pick it's focus point automatically, then you are often not going to have your main subject in focus.



Automatic focus POINT selection and auto focus are two different things. Look in your owner's manual and learn how to set the camera so ONLY the CENTER focus point is active. Then, to take your photo, you place that center point on your subject, HALF PRESS the shutter button to activate focus and exposure, then WHILE CONTINUING TO HOLD THE SHUTTER BUTTON HALF WAY DOWN, recompose the shot. When you have the scene composed as you want, then press the shutter all the way down to take the photo. This is called focus lock and will, most likely, solve your problems.



steve

Answer 2

You've gotten a lot of good answers from others. However nobody has addressed your yellow flowers losing detail. It's not just the color yellow. It can happen whenever there is a dominant primary color that is brighter than its surroundings. Your camera meter will adjust for average exposure. This will cause the bright primary color to be overexposed. In the craft, we call this clipping. You lose all detail. The solution is to reduce the exposure. How do you know that this is happening? Look at the RGB histogram on your LCD, if you see a peak for one color all the way over on the right, it means that there's a good chance that it's overexposed.

Answer 3

Check the handbook or the camera's menu. There is probably a setting which allows you to focus just on the centre of the picture, or on the nearest object.



In poor light with most cameras autofocus does not work well.



But do read the whole section in the handbook about focus, it may have some tips and surprises for you.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, you will not get very good pictures while you have your camera on auto focus. You really need to switch to manual focusing, in order to be selective with what part of the scene you are focusing on. Check with you operator's manual as to whether or not your camera will allow this.

You may also need to mount your camera on a sturdy type tripod, as you will be zooming in fairly close and as these close encounters your camera is more susceptible to movement on your part, thus blurring the shot.

As for the washed out colors, try photographing flowers on an overcast day. This will improve your flower photography no end, but you really need to get yourself a good tripod for these shots.

Check out my photo tips site at: http:fergiesfabfotos.blogspot.com and good luck!

Answer 5

1. Because getting good wildlife photographs is hard.

2. Because you're doing it with little or no knowledge of how to use your equipment.

3. Because the kit you're using isn't well suited to the job. Think about it. If pro wildlife photographers could get consistently good shots using cheap bridge cameras, they'd use cheap bridge cameras. They aren't using huge expensive cameras, fast telephoto lenses with manual control and large heavy tripods to impress the neophytes. They're using them because that's what it takes to get the job done.