Today was the day that patience was rewarded and I was treated to a wonderful display from this otter as she went fishing at the edge of the boating lake.
I'm at a loss as to how to best take pictures with my camera under the circumstances - she kept popping up for a second here and a couple of seconds there, and when a fish was caught she would pop up by the reeds to quickly swallow it and move on.
If anyone has any advice on how I could have improved the quality of my pictures, I would love to hear. The otter here was really quite close, even so, most of the above images are heavy crops. With my pocket Panasonic lumix TZ70 , I first increased the ISO to as high as I dared (ISO 800 - I have never had a decent picture with anything more than ISO400) - since it was dull and overcast and the Otter was moving quickly. I set my exposure time as long as I dared (some 1/80 and then 1/160sec felt safer) and left the camera to work out the f setting, knowing that everything would come out too dark anyway. I have increased the exposure in processing on these, as much as they would take. I don't think a tripod would have helped me (and in any case, I was on my way to work). One frustration was the delay between pressing the shutter and the image being taken, which is probably why no fish appear on any of my shots.
Excuse the lengthy blurb …. I'm just interested to know if anyone has any tips to help me get better shots if I see these beauties again any time soon.
I think with a Lumix TZ70 you have done a really good job, you have quite a lot of detail and some good images. I had a TZ70 and loved it (until it got drowned!) but I found it did have quite a slow shutter so was difficult to capture quick movements.
Sounds like you tried a lot of things to get the shot -but I still think these are nice...I particularly like the lower right image - his whiskers and wet coat are very detailed
Well caught. It is very frustrating when the technology limits us. High ISO, bright lens, no filters, manual settings, serial and silent mode and a lot of luck. I like your collage. Fav!
These are great! I absolutely love the thrill of finding wildlife that I can capture...especially the more elusive animals! Lucky you! Sounds like you did the best you could with your camera.....
@anniesue thanks Annie-Sue. These were very underexposed as they came out the camera, so have been brightened as much as I dare. Interestingly, the app I had on my phone did a much better job at this for posting on social media, than working on the raw files. Perhaps I just don't know how to do that properly! Anyway, thank you very much for your comment and suggestion.
The only thing I can "advise" is that many cameras now have a "sports mode" that takes several pictures rapid fire when you press down on the shutter. That setting would probably help catch "the fish". Other than that, under the circumstances I think you did get some good shots here and were able to pull out as much as you could from them with the processing. Great collage!
January 9th, 2019
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