Missed Opportunity - Lesson Learned

[Brian C in Az]

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Thursday night after taking some photos of the moon, I cleaned the camera and put away the gear. 

Saturday while driving we saw some wild horses and decided to stalk and take some photos. I stopped and put my R 70-180 f2.8 on with the 2x and started after the herd. Everything happened more quickly than expected, within 50 yards I was in a great position to start shooting and got some good shots. Suddenly two stallions start fighting. Hooves flying in the air, teeth gnashing at each other's throats. potentially, shots of a life time.

Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that when I put my camera away  I left it set at ISO 50. So I'm hand holding at 1/25s. Due to my lack of experience with digital, it didn't click in my head to check and change the ISO. Too used to film, you shot whatever was in the camera and did the best that you could when rushed. By the time I realized that I could increase the ISO and change it to 1600, most of the action subsided. While I got a few good shots, the best shot was ruined.

Lesson learned - always turn the ISO back up to 1600 before putting away the camera because you never know when something exciting is going to happen.

I've lived here for 17 years and have never seen more than a couple of these horses at a time. They are the last of a wild herd. Yesterday, we saw about 20 of them in 4 small groups in about an hour.

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[jaapv]

Make a "long lens" user profile... Including Auto-iSO and short shutter times.

[Brian C in Az]

Still learning those tricks.

The transition to digital will take a little while.

I was pleased with the quality of all the images, no out of focus and no shutter shake issues; even at 1/25s.

[sillbeers15]

90-280SL with stabilization will be easier for you. Besides the IQ is no lesser than APO R 70-180.

[Brian C in Az]

That wouldn't have fixed the wrong ISO and shutter speed issue. 

I just have to remember that ISO is user selectable at any time. So it would be best to always start higher and dial it down as need be. Not having to pause to raise the ISO would have given me a couple of great shots of those two stallions fighting over the mares. 

I met a guy that went to Patagonia in April. He lucked upon (his words) a puma stalking and pouncing on its prey. He had just enough time to lift his camera and start his continuous shutter. He got 2 frames of the puma crouching then the rest were of the cat flying through the air. He printed a nice display of 5 prints showing the scene. Had his ISO not been already set high and the camera not already in continuous shutter mode, he would have missed the opportunity to capture his favorite sequence of images. Too bad I met him an hour after my missed opportunity instead of the day before.

[LocalHero1953]

FWIW my solution to this is twofold:

- create a 'My Default' user profile and know how to quickly set it. 

- include AutoISO in this profile. The only user profile I have with fixed ISO is for flash. 

Your default can be A, S or M mode, but it should be one you are used to and know how to deviate quickly from. In my case it is A mode, and Face Recognition AF (which defaults to multifield when it can't find a face), but I know how to change quickly to Spot AF. 

[jaapv]

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3 hours ago, Brian C in Az said:

That wouldn't have fixed the wrong ISO and shutter speed issue. 

I just have to remember that ISO is user selectable at any time. So it would be best to always start higher and dial it down as need be. Not having to pause to raise the ISO would have given me a couple of great shots of those two stallions fighting over the mares. 

I met a guy that went to Patagonia in April. He lucked upon (his words) a puma stalking and pouncing on its prey. He had just enough time to lift his camera and start his continuous shutter. He got 2 frames of the puma crouching then the rest were of the cat flying through the air. He printed a nice display of 5 prints showing the scene. Had his ISO not been already set high and the camera not already in continuous shutter mode, he would have missed the opportunity to capture his favorite sequence of images. Too bad I met him an hour after my missed opportunity instead of the day before.

Why not?  You can select a high Auto-ISO value for your long lens profile, so you can switch to it quickly. It is an automatism each time you mount a long lens.

I strongly suggest not to fiddle with the ISO during use, as far as possible.

[helged]

4 hours ago, Brian C in Az said:

That wouldn't have fixed the wrong ISO and shutter speed issue. 

I just have to remember that ISO is user selectable at any time. So it would be best to always start higher and dial it down as need be. Not having to pause to raise the ISO would have given me a couple of great shots of those two stallions fighting over the mares. 

I met a guy that went to Patagonia in April. He lucked upon (his words) a puma stalking and pouncing on its prey. He had just enough time to lift his camera and start his continuous shutter. He got 2 frames of the puma crouching then the rest were of the cat flying through the air. He printed a nice display of 5 prints showing the scene. Had his ISO not been already set high and the camera not already in continuous shutter mode, he would have missed the opportunity to capture his favorite sequence of images. Too bad I met him an hour after my missed opportunity instead of the day before.

For wild life photography, it is a good rule to always have the system ready for quick shooting, impying sufficiently short shutter speed, a thought-through aperture setting, and an optimal AF mode/setting. A long-lens user preset, as has been mentioned by several, is the easiest and safest starting point for this, I guess. For more static subjects/situations, adjustments can be made to optimize the settings. After such a 'break', the long-lens settings needs to be activated again, being ready for any surprise(s) that might happen.

Typically, I take a few test shoot now and then, and certainly when leaving the house, car, tent, as well as after shooting static subjects or after altering the basic settings. Just for checking and confirming that the settings are fine. Personally, I am not a big fan of AUTO-ISO, but that's just me...

Edited November 26, 2018 by helged

[thighslapper]

This is one of the main reasons I have stuck to the combination of CL+SL and native lenses ......... despite attacks of GAS and the inevitable poring over reviews of Fuji, Hasselblad, Sony, Canon and Nikons FF/MF offerings ........... familiarity with a system and consistency of usage counts for an awful lot when it comes to successful image capture. 

Although I do mostly landscape, there are plenty of things to go wrong and sudden light changes often mean you have to react quickly. I have a fixed regular routine of checks I go through when setting up for every shot and consistent simplified control set-ups on both bodies so I never have to think where anything is located. I always reset to the base version of the profile I am using before moving on to another shot and if carrying either camera between locations set my 'auto everything ' profile so I can take quick handheld shots if needed. 

Having learnt some bitter lessons, these days I can be confident that every shot will be technically fine ..... appropriate ISO, well exposed and in focus ...... leaving the only excuse for poor images being laziness or my lack of compositional abilities ..... 🙄

Profiles are your best friend on the SL (and CL) ..... they will get you out of trouble on many an occasion ....

[Brian C in Az]

Thanks for the input. I agree with helged and thigh slapper that the creation of the long lens profile (or two) is the way to go and to keep reactivating it as required. I'm not a fan of Auto ISO, but that may be to lack of familiarity more than any other reason. I need to experiment more. Having only had the SL for a couple of weeks leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions and as I use it more, I will learn lessons the hard way as thigh slapper did, but those mistakes will become fewer and less frequent. 

[bags27]

Wonderful photo! thanks.

I'm not a huge fan emotionally of auto ISO, but I am intellectually. It's generally the way to go, and I always try to reset to auto when I put my camera away.

However, with very few exceptions, when I've been caught in the wrong ISO by several stops, I've managed to get reasonably acceptable outcomes through multiple layering in Photoshop. For me, blown highlights (the opposite of your situation) is a greater challenge than underexposure. Digital photography is extraordinarily elastic. With film, there was always pushing the ISO (or as we called it, ASA) in the camera or in development, but nothing like one can do with digital.

I realize that this is probably not why you consider your photos ruined; camera shake it seems, and for that, I am truly sorry and feel your pain, since these are fantastic moments seemingly lost. But there is software available that does at least a credible job even with that (for example in Photoshop: filter > sharpen > shake reduction; but I think dxo Photolab or dxo Nik collection does a better job; and others as well that I haven't tried). Given that these are distant, rather than (say) closely detailed macro, shots, I suspect you'll find the outcomes acceptable.

Edited November 26, 2018 by bags27

[jaapv]

Focus Magic is a good anti-shake program.

[rob_w]

On 11/25/2018 at 10:51 PM, jaapv said:

Make a "long lens" user profile... Including Auto-iSO and short shutter times.

I second Jaap's recommendation.  I do the same on my M.  Also have a base user profile, regardless of lens attached, which I always revert to when taking the camera out for use.  That way everything is reset back to my preferred group of settings and I know what I am doing from there.  Separately, I have a long lens profile exactly as Jaap describes -- auto-ISO and fast shutter speed.