The Wild Photographer
Learn techniques, tips, and tricks for improving your wildlife, travel, landscape, and general nature photography with Court Whelan. Whether you consider yourself a beginner, serious hobbyist, or advanced professional, this is the way to rapidly understand and implement new skills to elevate your photography to new heights.
The Wild Photographer
How Pro Photographers Get Super Sharp Images Every Time
Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Wild Photographer, Court Whelan breaks down the essential techniques for getting sharp images in both landscape and wildlife photography. He shares insider tips on shutter speed, aperture, and focusing techniques, plus the real impact of ISO on sharpness. You’ll also learn how to leverage image stabilization, drive mode, and post-processing tools like Topaz Denoise to get crystal-clear shots.
Key Takeaways:
📍 Shutter Speed & Movement: The faster the shutter, the sharper the shot—but how fast depends on your subject’s motion. For wildlife, start at 1/500s for resting animals, 1/1000s for walking animals, and 1/2000s+ for fast-moving subjects like birds in flight.
📍 Aperture & Depth of Field:
- For landscapes, aim for F8 to F11 to keep everything sharp while avoiding diffraction.
- For wildlife and portraits, focus on the eyes and adjust your aperture depending on how much of the subject you want in focus.
📍 Focusing for Maximum Sharpness:
- Hyper-focus: For landscapes, focus 1/3rd into the scene to maximize depth of field.
- Wildlife & portraits: Always focus on the eyes to make the whole image appear sharper.
📍 Stabilization & Handheld Shooting:
- Use image stabilization to reduce shake, but remember—it won’t freeze subject motion.
- Follow the Inverse Focal Length Rule as a baseline for handheld shooting.
- If using a tripod, add a 2-second delay or a remote shutter to eliminate vibration.
📍 ISO Trade-offs:
- Lower ISO = better quality, but sometimes you need to crank it up to freeze motion.
- Be mindful of noise at high ISOs—only use noise reduction software like Topaz Denoise when absolutely necessary, as it can actually reduce sharpness.
📍 Drive Mode for Extra Sharpness:
- Shooting in burst mode can help—sometimes the 3rd or 4th image in a sequence is sharper because the camera stabilizes after the initial click.
📍 Post-Processing for Sharper Images:
- Use selective sharpening on key areas like the eyes for a natural, crisp look.
- Be careful with noise reduction—it can soften details if overused.
Listener Question of the Day:
💡 How do you deal with noise reduction in post-processing?
Court explains when and how to use Topaz Denoise and Lightroom’s noise reduction to clean up high-ISO images without sacrificing too much detail.
Resources & Links:
🔗 Court Whelan’s Website & Podcast Archive
🔗 YouTube Channel – More Photography Tips & Tutorials
🔗 LensRentals.com – Use WILDPHOTOGRAPHER15 for 15% Off
🔗 ArtHelper.ai – 30-Day Free Trial with Code WILD
💬 Enjoyed the episode? Leave a review and share it with your fellow photographers! 🎧
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Wild Photographer. I'm your host, court Whalen, and I've got a great episode today talking all about how pro photographers get insanely sharp images each and every time. I think when it comes to sharpness in images, it's like the Holy Grail. It's also the common denominator. It's something that we all, as pro photographers or amateur photographers, really strive for. It's also something that I think we kind of hold as the gold standard, like if the image isn't sharp, the image is lost, and so the sharper the image, the better the image. Not only am I going to tell you the various ways we can up the ante and ensure sharpness through all sorts of techniques hint, it's not just about aperture, shutter speed and ISO, it's about more than that but also I'm going to challenge you a little bit about what happens if your image isn't super sharp. What are those cases when it's okay to not have a crisp, sharp image, like capturing really interesting wildlife behavior or a really beautiful moment in time in a landscape shot with extraordinary lighting. So we've got a lot to talk about today, all about how pro photographers get really, really sharp images. But before I go into that, I wanted to thank our sponsors that make this podcast possible.
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Speaker 1:Okay, without further ado, let's get into today's podcast on how pro photographers get insanely sharp images each and every time. So, first off, let's talk about what the main elements are. So we're really looking at, I would say kind of two general genres of photography that we're going to be framing this conversation around. We're going to start off with landscape photography and then we're going to move to wildlife photography. And I will say that, although I'm not a huge people photographer, the wildlife photography is totally parallel. If you are a cultural photographer, a portrait photographer, if you love to photograph people, the lessons in the wildlife section parlay perfectly to photographing people too. So let's start off with landscape photography. So the first thing to get really, really sharp images is probably the most obvious, it's the most important. It's having the right shutter speed.
Speaker 1:So when we're looking at landscape photography, the great thing is that landscapes don't generally move. Now, I say generally, because sometimes movement and landscapes can be a beautiful thing. It might be a babbling brook, it might be a waterfall, it might be even some wind moving through the flowers and the trees. So to get really, really sharp images across your landscape scene, the first thing is to know what kind of shutter speed you need. Now there's this trick, this idea known as the inverse focal length rule. We're going to come back to this and talk even more in the wildlife slash, people photography section.
Speaker 1:But the inverse law says basically, if you take your focal length of your lens so let's say it's a 50 millimeter, like I'm filming today, let's say it's 100 millimeter, or let's say you're doing big wide angle landscapes, that's like a 16 millimeter or a 20 millimeter the inverse law says that you need to be shooting at one over the focal length as your shutter speed in order to freeze your own hand movement. So this is different than the movement of the landscape, different movement from the wildlife, but to deal with your own movement, meaning the steadiest hand you can have, generally we look at one over the focal length as that minimum number. Now don't read into this too much with the wide angle, into the spectrum, because I'm never going to advise with a 20 millimeter that you stick with one over 20 and then forget about the rest. That's not exactly adhering to the rule. But when we get into bigger focal lengths, like 50, 100, 200, that one over the focal length shutter speed law is a really, really great thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:The other caveat is this was invented for lack of a better word back in the day before image stabilization or vibration reduction, whatever your camera might call that image stabilizer within the body and or lens. So when we look at shooting at a 200 millimeter which you know, even though I'm starting with landscapes, I shoot a lot of landscapes on medium telephoto, like my 70 to 200 is one of my favorite landscape lenses. So what that means is that if I'm taking a shot of a distant mountain scene or whatever it might be, at 200 millimeters, I'm thinking I want to be at one 200th of a second in order to minimize my hand movement. But again, I want to go deeper here and talk about image stabilization. So a lot of these lenses today, a lot of the in-camera stabilization, has ratings based on stops of light, kind of doing air quotes here. So what that means is that if you are at 200 millimeters and you know and think you want to be shooting at 1 200th of a second, if you have two stops of stabilization in your lens, what that means is that 1 over 200, when thinking about hand movement, because you're hand holding your shot, we'll get to tripods in a second. That means you can achieve the same thing by 1 50th of a second, means you can achieve the same thing by one 50th of a second.
Speaker 1:And here's the reason is that one 200, if you take one stop of light out of that or add it. We're talking about just general units here. That means one 200th would be the same as one 100th of a second. That's one stop of light. You take two stops of light and you have that further to one 50th. Now the cool and crazy thing is that a lot of these cameras and lens combinations are boasting something like three to five maybe even more than that stops of light. So you could, in theory, start hashing that down further and further and further. A third stop of light in that equation I'm talking about goes down to 1 over 25. A fourth goes to 1 over 12 or 1 over 13th of a second.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest, I don't think that the stops of light these lenses and camera bodies are stabilizing gets you that far. I really rarely would think less than 1, 50th of a second in this scenario, meaning I'm not going to really trust the system to freeze my hand movement more than a couple stops. The key thing to take away is that because of in-camera stabilization, because of lens stabilization, we're not just stuck at that inverse focal length rule any longer. We can actually reduce that by these stops of light. So it's not reducing it just by a little bit. It's not saying, oh my 1 200th of a second can be now 1 160th of a second. It's actually having it a couple times.
Speaker 1:So, frankly, I feel pretty comfortable shooting a landscape if I'm really stable, maybe using kind of some bracing technique, putting my elbows at my side, sort of you know looking, taking a page from the marksmanship book of you know shooting other things other than cameras, taking a breath in, exhaling halfway and being really really stable as I depress that shutter. So one 50th is a really, really kind of safe but also aggressive way to reduce your shutter speed in those cases that you need to. Now. All that being said, the faster the shutter speed for any scenario, the more you're going to freeze motion and the more sharpness your photo is going to have, or I should say the less risk of unsharpness in your photo. So this isn't to say 1 50th is a perfect for all scenarios. It's just kind of the minimum.
Speaker 1:If you have low light, if there's some other thing going on where you're freezing motion but also want to get as much light in your sensor, you want to shoot it. A really ISO, a really low ISO, that's the way to do it. That's the way to think about it. But that all being said, I really rarely when I have the ability to photograph a landscape that's not moving, I have the ability to shoot fast. I'm I am shooting at 1 200th, 1, 320th, maybe even faster, because, frankly, usually there's enough light and I myself am not too worried about bumping up that ISO a little bit, let's say from 200 to 400 or 400 to 800. So shutter speed again, I'd be remiss if I didn't start this conversation with saying the key and core way of a pro photographer to get really sharp photos starts with a fast shutter speed.
Speaker 1:Now, when we get into the wildlife section, I'm going to talk about more about freezing motion of the subject itself. We're really talking, in landscapes, about freezing the motion of your hand and camera because, well, let's face it, I like to be handheld for the vast, vast majority of my shots. I think I'm more flexible, I can take more shots in less time, I can frame in more creative ways. It just yields a lot more photos. The second thing I want to talk about is aperture. Now, with landscape photography, you generally want to have a big F number, which is the same thing as saying a small aperture. Remember it's sort of counterintuitive that you think big depth of field. Technically it's a small aperture because it's narrowing down that little pinhole focus of your camera's aperture to smaller and smaller circumferences, which translates into a bigger depth of field.
Speaker 1:There's a little trick you can use, even when you're in your house walking around, and if you look through your hand, if you make like a little OK symbol but turn that finger into a very, very small little opening like the size of a pinhead, you're going to notice by looking through that small hole versus looking through a big OK symbol like the size of a silver dollar, you're going to notice your eyes work with the surroundings quite a bit differently. Surroundings quite a bit differently. If you have your fingers open, looking through them in a circle at your entire scene, you're going to notice only what your eyes are zeroing in on. Only what your eyes are focusing on is being in focus. Everything else is kind of blurry. However, when you look through the exact same scene through a pinhole meaning, tighten your fingers down to make a very, very tight okay symbol and look through that, all of a sudden everything you're looking at is in focus.
Speaker 1:This is just straight up optical physics 101, 102. Don't overthink the why behind it, unless you want to go into a deep, dark rabbit hole about optical physics. But the idea is is when light passes through a small opening, meaning a small aperture, it turns into a very, very big depth of field. So with landscape photography, nine times out of 10, when I want a tack sharp image, I'm shooting at a bigger F number, like F11, maybe even F16 to get the whole thing in focus. Now I rarely go over F11 and especially not over F16, because of this thing called the law of limited diffraction.
Speaker 1:What happens is, as you give more and more definition to each pixel because of this big depth of field, it literally crowds out pixels on your sensor. So all of a sudden your 45 megapixel camera won't have 45 megapixels in it because you're crowding them out with the definition of each pixel. So each pixel, instead of being round or square, it's getting more amorphous, it's getting more like multi-pointed star. So that way it does make the photo more defined, it does make it sharper, but if you crowd out the megapixels, you're actually losing some definition in your scene. So every camera, totally based on the sensor's megapixel rating and the sensor size, has a little bit of a sweet spot and I'm sorry to tell you that the sweet spot for maximum definition on these big, fancy high megapixel cameras is closer to like f7.1. Now, that's not great for landscape photography. When you want the whole scene in focus, when you want the river in focus, when you want the flowers in focus as well as the mid ground, the trees, the forest, as well as the very deep background like the mountain range. When you want all that in focus, my go-to, as long as light allows, is F11. Yes, it's going to probably crowd out some megapixels, but it's worth it because I really want that depth of field.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing I'm going to talk about is where and how to focus to achieve what's called hyperfocus. This is one of those next level things where your sharpness of your photo is highly dependent on where you focus, irrespective of the shutter speed, of the aperture, of the ISO. It goes outside of that golden triangle. So, hyper focus there are some equations that you can easily find online where you plug in the focal length of your lens. You can plug in the distance of your scene, like how far away is that mountain range and how close is that patch of flowers, meaning how close is your foreground compared to your background and some other variables that you need to plug in. But I'm going to save you all that all that complicated steps because we're in the field and we're not thinking about long, complex equations to achievefocus, meaning, where in your big scene do you focus to get as much in focus as possible? That's called hyperfocus and this is it. Even if you were to do this equation, you're gonna find each and every time it's very, very close to this simple rule.
Speaker 1:You want to focus when you want everything in focus, about a third of the way into your scene. Meaning, if the start of your scene, meaning if the start of your scene, the foreground is 20 feet away and the background is a mile away, you want to judge where roughly about a third of that distance is and that's your focal point. Now I should clarify if there's something in the foreground that you want in tack, sharp focus at the expense of the background, which is a technique I often use for landscape photography. If I want to showcase that flower, if I want to showcase the river or the river rocks, it's going to be worth it to me to focus on those entities, those things, knowing that my background might be a little out of focus, but very often I do want the whole thing in focus. I might not have a really, really dominant subject and I want it as focused as possible, but I also want the trees in the mid ground and focus. I also want the mountain range in the distance and focus. There might be two or three layers of those mountains that I all want in focus. So, as a result, hyper focus for me.
Speaker 1:My tip to you is to focus one third of the way into the scene. That's what you lock focus on and then you take your shot. So we have three main ingredients going on here. You want a shutter speed that is going to be able to freeze your hand motion, which is that inverse focal length. Again, even though I have stabilization on most of my lenses, I'm going to ramp that up a little bit because I just want to make absolutely sure that everything is going to be tack sharp and there's no hand movement, so truly, even on telephotos or even on like 24 millimeter lenses I'm looking at like one over 320 is kind of like my ideal shutter speed, still keeping rock solid with my body, with my hands, to minimize hand movement. I'm also going to be choosing a pretty high aperture, or shall I say a pretty big F number for a big depth of field. I'm sort of vacillating between F8 and F11, based on light, but F8, f11 is a really, really nice, sweet spot. And then I'm going to be using my center point autofocus to judge you don't have to be perfect here, but just, with intentionality, judge what one third of the way into the scene is, and then you take the shot, and this is going to work pretty much each and every time.
Speaker 1:One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the incorporation of a tripod which, let's face it, in landscape photography is a really good move. It's a really good call. I do think tripods are useful. I find myself using them primarily for really slow shutter photography, like night photography, like motion blur photography. But if you are going on a primarily landscape based photographic trip, like going to the deserts, the American Southwest, where you're mostly going to be photographing landscapes versus wildlife or people, a tripod is a really nice thing to have.
Speaker 1:And what does this do? Well, it basically takes the shutter speed equation and gives you a lot of leeway and, as you probably understand, this relationship between shutter speed equation and gives you a lot of leeway and, as you probably understand, this relationship between shutter speed and ISO means you can drop your ISO down. You're always going to have the best quality and best sharpness from the lowest ISO possible. 100 is usually the kind of tippy top gold standard of a low ISO. Some cameras will go down to like 80 or even 50. Technically that's going to be better, but you're not going to notice a whole lot of difference in these quote unquote low ISOs, usually ranging up to ISO 400, no matter what camera you have.
Speaker 1:If you feel like you have a more introductory camera something that is probably let's just put a number out there like a thousand dollars or less for a DSLR or a mirrorless camera body, you might want to stick more to ISO 200. That might mean you do need a tripod. What a tripod allows you to do is not worry about your own hand movement. So it throws that inverse focal length rule out of the equation and it means you can probably be shooting well, really as slow as you want, but I tend to shoot maybe like one 10th of a second, one 20th, one 30th. That means I'm not worried at all about the shutter speed. Shutter speed is a means to an end. And what that allows me to do, even if I have really really dim light, is I can shoot on those big aperture numbers, those big F numbers like F8, like F11, like F16, and still get a low ISO which is going to give me the tippy top best quality. So those are all things to consider there, and I think they're really really darn useful.
Speaker 1:Now, the one additional little caveat there is I will pay even more attention to my shutter speed when I'm trying to incorporate some sort of movement, will pay even more attention to my shutter speed when I'm trying to incorporate some sort of movement, intentional camera blur, in my shot. Now this is not moving the whole camera, like some of the artistic images I'm seeing out there nowadays, with intentional camera blur blurring the entire scene. But the blur I'm talking about is like silky waterfall effects, moving rivers, and that's where we're looking at, you know, anywhere from one tenth of a second to four, five, whole seconds. It has everything to do with the speed of the water, the motion of the water, the quality of the water, the white water that might be there and actually have an entire separate podcast specifically on capturing that silky movement effect of water. So if that's something that you're into, something you're anticipating, be sure to listen to that quick episode because it's going to give you a lot more tips and tricks.
Speaker 1:Now my final thing here with landscape photography on the tripod front is what do you do to minimize the motion that you're injecting into your camera with simply pushing your shutter button? You actually are going to move it a little bit by pushing that button ever so slightly. It does have the risk of moving your entire camera and therefore adding a little bit of blur into your overall scene, something that we do not want to do. We don't want the whole scene to be a little bit jostled, a little bit blurred. So a really easy trick that's capable on every camera out there, even if you don't have a remote shutter button, remote cable release, is to set your camera on a two second timer. So this is a really really great way to ensure super tack, sharp photos with landscapes. Once you have the big depth of field, once you have shutter speed under control, once you've dialed down the lowest ISO possible. This two second delay will allow you to press the shutter button again after you've achieved hyper focus, after you focus in one third of the way into the scene. And that takes out the last bit of the equation, which is that camera movement or blur, that happens when you actually touch your camera, that little bit of movement. So again, two second exposure is going to do wonders for ensuring that you've stacked the deck in your favor for getting every little bit out of your camera for a tack sharp landscape photo.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to wildlife and people. As far as getting tack sharp photos, so the first thing I'm going to talk about is with wildlife, with people, very likely you're not going to want to or not going to be able to get the entire scene in focus. Oftentimes we just want a certain part of the scene in focus and that's what we're judging tack sharpness by. So wildlife is a great example, whether you're shooting on portraiture, where you really are trying to blur the background, blur the foreground, while keeping the animal or person in focus. The best way to do that is using a little bit of psychology and picking out where you focus. So this is akin to hyper-focus in landscape mode or landscape photography, where you know there's a certain part of the scene you want in focus, but generally with wildlife and people, it's not the whole thing, it's the animal itself. So the number one tip here is you have to choose somewhere to focus. Even if the animal is small in your frame, there's still part of the animal that you need to be focusing on, and that is each and every time.
Speaker 1:To make the whole animal look in focus is focus on the eyes. I'm going to repeat that because it's such a core tenant. This is like 999 times out of a thousand. I want the eyes in focus and I can't tell you how many times I do that. The eyes are intact, sharp focus, the heads in focus, but there are parts of the animal the hind quarters, the tail, whatever the pause they're actually not in focus. But you know what? It doesn't really matter, because the viewer whether it's you, whether it's someone you're showing your photo to at an exhibition is if the eyes are in focus, that is going to look like a tack sharp photo each and every time.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to start with that little bit of an X factor bit of advice is, even though there are many times you want the entire animal in focus, the thing you need to start with is making sure the eyes are in focus, because very often the eye of you or your viewers doesn't really care if the rest or if certain parts of the animal aren't intact sharp focus because the eyes and the face are. Or you have a lens that can get down to really really small F numbers. Sometimes these big super telephotos can get down to 2.8. Some of the smaller lenses, like 100 millimeters, 50 millimeters, can get down to like 1.8, 1.4, 1.2. What's going to happen is that if you focus on the eyes on those really really shallow depths of field lenses and you're using the F1.4, is that you might have the eyes in focus, but something as close by as the nose is not in focus, or the forehead or the ears.
Speaker 1:And the best way to do that is taking a page from landscape photography and looking at the ratio of the animal in your frame. So if that animal's head takes up the whole frame, which is a beautiful shot, it gets to know the personality of the animal, maybe some expressions and behavior. You almost need to treat that like a beautiful shot. It gets to know the personality of the animal, maybe some expressions and behavior. You almost need to treat that like a landscape photo. The eyes are going to be the mid ground, the nose is the foreground, the ears are the background, just like these big sweeping mountain scenes. And so, even though we might think, oh well, this is a small part of my own eyes frame, I don't need to shoot like like F8, f11. You're going to need to switch from f 2.8 or f4 and you're actually going to need to get to like that f8, f11 range, these big f numbers. You want the eyes in focus, you want the nose in focus, you want the ears in focus, maybe even a little bit of the back in focus, and that animal takes up 50 or greater of your scene. Treat it like a landscape shot and shoot it F8, f11. Okay, so that's kind of your your aperture and focal area lesson of wildlife photography for tack sharp photos.
Speaker 1:But we might be missing out on a really, really additional key thing here, and this is where I would say one of the biggest differences in landscape photography versus wildlife or people photography is that you definitely need to think about how much movement is going on, not just in your camera and your own hand movement, but primarily, much more so, how much movement is the animal engaging in. And so, generally speaking, when I'm photographing wildlife, I'm unlikely to be less than one over 320. I'm even unlikely to be less than one over 500. Now, these movement categories are very, very flexible, so I don't want you to only take resting and slightly moving animals at one over 500. Like I'm about to advise, you want to shoot as fast as you can to freeze motion. But in general I kind of look at it as several different categories. Let's take photographing polar bears in the tundras of Churchill, for instance, a place that I know and love and have photographed a lot.
Speaker 1:Generally, when I have a resting animal, a resting polar bear, there's going to be some movement. There's going to be some random, erratic, unpredictable movement, but in general they're not moving very much. They might be somewhat lifting their head up, they might be very, very slowly rolling around. I'm going to look in the range of one over 500, maybe to one over 750 for my shutter speed. That's what's going to give me the tack sharp focus. The tack sharp definition from the animal when there's slight movement is one over 500, one over 750 at minimum. So all of a sudden you're probably realizing that this inverse focal length rule flies out the window, because no longer are you worried. Do you have to worry about the movement of your own hand, the movement of the camera. Now you're shooting faster than that because you're prioritizing for the animal wildlife movement.
Speaker 1:If we're going to the next category of movement and we're looking at maybe a walking animal, let's shoot at one over 500 to one over a thousand. Let's bump that up a little bit If that walk turns into a saunter, a jaunt, a little bit more of a fast moving thing. Let's say they're walking from left to right or towards you or away from you and it's like at four to six miles an hour kind of like a very, very fast human walking pace. I'm going to be at least at one over a thousand. I'm not going to risk it by shooting at one over 200, even if I'm on a 200 millimeter. I'm not going to risk it by shooting one over 500. I absolutely want to freeze that motion and that movement. So I'm really starting to train my brain to think about one over a thousand.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, when we're thinking about fast moving wildlife, if they're running, if a bird is flying, I'm bumping that up, not quite double the shutter speed, because one over 2000 is very, very fast and all of a sudden your light is going to just fall off a cliff. But I am thinking one over 1250, one over 1600, working my way up to one over 2000. I am really doing my best to take multiple photos at all those different shutter speeds, just because of the what if. What if when I look in the back of my camera something's blurry? And I missed that whole scene, I missed that entire behavior. What if it looks good in the back of my camera? But when I put it on a computer screen, a 30 inch monitor, and I start to zoom in to a hundred percent and really really analyze the sharpness and detail, what if it's blurry? So I have that one over a thousand shot, but I really want to make sure I have some other options just in case. And so again, fast moving wildlife. One over 2000 is a really really safe bet.
Speaker 1:But part of your job is to weigh all the pros and cons. There are no solutions here, there's only trade-offs. So when you're shooting, let's say, an animal's face, and you took my lesson, and you want an F8, you want an F11, but you also want to freeze motion. 1 over 2000 might give you a crazy high ISO that degrades the image in its own right for the desire of just being super safe and making sure you freeze the motion. You want to shoot at that range and experiment, because there's going to be a sweet spot, there's going to be a best photo in all of that. What if the animal's running but you photograph it when it stops? You don't need one over 2,000. You don't need one over 3,200. And by dropping that down to something more moderate and manageable, like one over 1000, all of a sudden you're going to notice your ISO is lower. You're going to notice you can get a bigger, deeper depth of field by going back up to F 11. Or, gosh, even F 16. And that might be your best photo. So it's a lot of analysis, it's a lot of thinking in the moment, but the best advice I have for you is to plan on shooting at multiple shutter speeds in order to get all that data, in order to get additional photos to support If you find that those slower shutter speeds based on the movement just aren't quite cutting it.
Speaker 1:Another trick that I found in recent years is using my drive motor. So drive motor is basically how many photos your camera takes per second. We often refer to it as an FPS or frames per second. And if you go into your camera's manual or online for another tutorial, you might find that your make and model shoots up to five frames a second. Newer, fancier cameras are shooting up to 10, 15, 20, even 30 frames a second. Some of the flagship top line cameras out there are shooting, I kid you, not, like 30 frames a second. Some of the flagship top line cameras out there are shooting, I kid you not, like 60 frames a second. What I've found this can be a really, really useful setting to bump up that frame rate, to shoot as fast as possible.
Speaker 1:And actually the third, fourth, 10th photo in that sequence sometimes tends to be the sharpest because it's minimizing the movement of the camera. It's minimizing that slight jostling that you have by pressing the shutter. And now that you've depressed the shutter and the camera now once again returns to relative stability, it's your photos within that sequence, midway through or at the end of your sequence, that tend to be the sharpest. In addition, like I was mentioning, you might be photographing an animal that is walking and stopping running and stopping flying and perching. If you have a burst mode on a high drive motor, you're going to often find that the best photos might be at that middle range of your entire sequence something within like five to 10 photos of when you started and stopping taking that sequence. So high drive motor is not a panacea. It is not the first thing I'm going to think about, but if you're trying to eke out a little bit more sharpness which is what this episode is all about is getting the most sharpness you can from your photos Looking at a high drive motor is a really really good way to go.
Speaker 1:Now stabilization is another really helpful tool here with wildlife photography. But again, keep in mind that it's mostly just going to limit motion from your own hand movement. Putting the biggest, best lens and the most incredible stabilization is going to do almost nothing for freezing wildlife movement if you're already at 1 over 1000, if you're already at 1 over 1250. So stabilization is great, but just remember that stabilization only limits your own hand movement, not the wildlife movement. Super important thing to play a part here. So the last kind of thing I'm going to talk about before I go into post-processing, that is, of how we can even boost further our sharpness through delicate, very intentional, very moderate tools.
Speaker 1:But the last thing before I get into that is me how ISO plays a role in all this. So I've already cautioned a couple of times about what happens when you're setting a super fast shutter speed and a really, really big depth of field let's say one over 2000 and F 11, unless you're shooting into a sky like a moving bird, a flying bird. If you're photographing into the brush, into the darkness, or even shooting in the early morning light or really a number of other scenarios, you might find that your ISO is getting really really high, really quickly. Just a quick little aside here the reason that I say we might find our ISO getting high is because I always shoot on manual plus auto ISO. That's all my landscape photography, that's all my wildlife photography, all my people photography. I'm shooting on manual, meaning I'm plugging in my aperture so I can dial in F8. I am putting on manual mode for my shutter speed too.
Speaker 1:I want to tell the camera I'm looking at 1 over 1000. I want you to shoot at 1 over 1600. But what I found is that, letting the camera decide on the ISO to take an even exposure, something in the middle, something that's properly lit, the camera will constantly make adjustments to get that quote unquote perfect ISO. But the thing is I have no upper ISO limit set on my camera because I monitor it very, very closely. So you might be really surprised when photographing wildlife around the world, which is almost always going to be in somewhat challenging lighting conditions it's early in the morning, it's late at night, it's involving movement, it's an animal that is in the sunshine one second and in the shadows the next.
Speaker 1:As you might find that while you're shooting a slew of photos at ISO 400 and you're happy and you know that that's a low ISO, you might find when that animal, when that cheetah, gets into the shade bush and sits down, all of a sudden your camera is giving you ISO 1600, iso 3200. And the problem there is that, yes, your shutter speed is great, yes, your aperture is great, but the photo quality diminishes markedly as you double your ISO each and every time. Basically, what it does this is kind of a little nerdy aside, but how ISO works is your camera actually sends a small electric pulse through your sensor that basically makes it more sensitive to light, and so that's why sometimes ISO is like this magic bullet, the silver bullet, where if you're not able to get the photo with the aperture and shutter speed you want, we have that ability to send that pulse through the sensor, make it more sensitive to light and you get that photo, voila, magically just by increasing your ISO. Now again, the key thing here is that as it gets to these numbers of 3,200, 6,400, over 12,000 ISO, the photo is going to get grainier and grainier, which 100% reduces overall quality and sharpness in your photo. So ISO still plays a major, major role. One of the big reasons I keep up to date with cameras is because their ability to handle high ISOs is a really, really huge benefit. Like on my Canon 5D, I'm able to shoot at ISO 3200 with relatively little degradation of quality.
Speaker 1:Now, quick little teaser here for today's listener question that was submitted not too long ago. The question is how do you deal with noise reduction software? And this is a really cool thing. So I just want to plant that seed. We're going to come back to that after I talk about some of the sharpening techniques I use for my photos in post. Noise reduction is something that I do in post. It's in my camera raw platform, it's in Photoshop and Lightroom and all that. So we're going to come back to that.
Speaker 1:But first let's talk about what I do in my post-processing workflow to boost that sharpness just a little bit further Now. I'll admit that sharpening photos in post is the last thing I really want to do. If I have to sharpen a photo in post-processing, that's usually because I want to take an already sharp photo and boost it up just a little bit more. So oftentimes what I'll do, especially with wildlife if I'm photographing a lion and I'm focused on the eye and I'm filling the frame with it, I might go with a little bit of a brush mask and actually boost the sharpening on that eye just a little bit more. So keep in mind, I'm not turning a blurry photo into a sharp photo. I'm turning a sharp photo into a ridiculously tack sharp photo, and that's a really, really great technique pro photographers use to level up their sharpness.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, let's get to the listener question that is so germane to this topic, which is how do I deal with noise reduction in my post-processing workflow? It allows you to get those fast shutter speeds, which is always the number one way that photographs turn out to be blurry is not taking into account motion blur from your own hand movement or from the wildlife or people movement but denoising is allowing us more and more today to deal with high ISOs, shooting at a high ISO in the moment and then quote unquote rescuing it in post processing, ie Photoshop. So there are two primary ways that I work. One is with a third party program called Topaz Denoise. It's a great program. It is intuitive, it is robust and it's very, very good at taking the noise out of the scene.
Speaker 1:I've been amazed, when I'm photographing birds and dark forests and dark jungles, that I can rescue this shot and bring it to a really, really beautiful aesthetic just by running this denoise filter from Topaz or from Lightroom, or I use Camera Raw, which is basically the same thing, and the results are just absolutely staggering. Now, you have to be careful with this, though, and I really do not advise people to just run every photo you take through topaz denoise or through Lightroom denoise. I am noticing it more and more with photographers that they're just putting even moderately high ISOs through this, this pass through this filter, and it's turning this kind of. It's actually you know what it's truly doing is going against the grain of sharpening. It's actually reducing the sharpness of your photo. I'm not going to get into the why or the how behind Denoise software works, but Topaz and Photoshop and Lightroom they all work the same way in that they actually soften the image. They take that grain out, but they soften the image and then they re-inject sharpening into the photo. So it's this weird kind of push and pull action where you definitely want to rescue some of the grain, some of the sandpaper, like grit on your photo, not actual sandpaper, but it's this textured grain. You want to rescue that because it ultimately looks quite bad in the end photo.
Speaker 1:But you're letting the program go in and use, yes, some smart software to resharpen, but there is always a cost to it. So I would not do it needlessly. Frankly. I'm only denoising those shots that are shot at like ISO 6400 and above. I think below that you've got to be really really judicious and only denoise those photos that really really look quite bad, because again it's actually de-sharpening your image in the first place.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about getting the most sharpness out of your photos, denoise kind of flies in the face of that. So it's a complicated mixture of things, right? Because on one hand I'm telling you, boost the ISO up so you can get the fast shutter speed, so you can get the fast shutter speed, so you can get the big aperture, but be careful not to use too much denoise, because it'll actually further degrade your image At the end of the day if you can't get the shutter speed to freeze motion, if you can't get the depth of field to give you the look you want with the supreme sharpness you want. Iso is that silver bullet, but you've got to be judicious with it in post processing. So, folks, there you go. That was kind of a quick but a deep dive into how pro photographers get super sharp images each and every time.
Speaker 1:I want to turn you on to a couple resources if you don't know about them already. First and foremost, I have a lot of other podcast episodes out there, so if this is the first one you're stumbling upon, please do indeed go to my website, courtwhalencom, and click on podcast. You're gonna see the whole list there, and I have a lot of other tips and tricks having to do with sharpening, having to do with aperture, having to do with composition and even other totally different topics. So check that out. At my website, courtwhalencom, you'll also find that I have a sign up for blog posts.
Speaker 1:I write blog posts often on all things conservation, travel and photography. So if you would like to hear more from me on that. Please do sign up. And finally, I want to point you in the direction of my YouTube channel, where all these podcasts now appear and you can get some really cool additional tips and tricks on other things that might not appear on the podcast. So if you would go there and subscribe, it's probably the biggest, best way you can help me in making sure I can make new content all the time for the wild photographer podcast. So once again, thank you so much for joining and looking forward to talking with you next time.