Technique assessment

Choose your aperture

Geert says… Of the three points in the exposure triangle, I like to start with aperture. I asked Dave to set up his D750 to shoot the squirrels in the cloudy conditions we were presented with and he opted for a wide aperture of f/2.8. I suggested he move to f/5.6 not only because some lenses are particularly soft wide open, but also to increase the depth of field to get the entire body of the squirrel in focus.

Get the right shutter speed

Geert says… After switching to Manual exposure mode, Dave’s initial shutter speed was a bit slow, at around 1/250 sec. I suggested he should aim for around 1/400 sec to freeze movement from the skittish squirrels and keep them nice and sharp. The longer the lens used, the faster this should be to avoid blur. Depending on the light, this would mean setting a relatively high ISO, but that’s a price worth paying in order to get pin-sharp shots – and modern Nikons handle noise very well.

shoot Continuously

Geert says… A vital part of the shooting process when working with squirrels, or any wildlife for that matter, is to capture a sequence of images as they dart around in front of you. With single frame mode engage on his D750, Dave would’ve missed a lot of opportunities to get some good shots, so I asked him to change this to Continuous High shooting mode to give him a 6.5 frames-per-second shooting rate.