Nikon Z6iii - The Story Behind The Photos (A Goldmine Of Field Techniques)

Summary

Steve Perry takes us on an adventurous journey with the Nikon Z6iii as he shares the stories behind his stunning wildlife photographs. Broadcasting from his camper on an extended trip, he reveals field techniques that helped him capture striking images in a limited timeframe. Using a pre-production model, Perry navigated the challenges of varying locations, like Orlando Wetlands, emphasizing how spontaneity and technical knowledge combined to produce breathtaking results.

Highlights

• Perry captures a sharp image of a spoonbill thanks to the camera's quick focus and effective shutter speed. 🦩
• Teaches the trick of using black and white mode to handle harsh lighting situations, as shown with a vulture portrait. 🦅
• Showcases the powerful dynamic range of the Nikon Z6iii by pulling out stunning details in high-ISO scenarios. 🌅
• Demonstrates how persistence and knowing your equipment can turn fleeting wildlife moments into captivating images. 🎥
• Highlights capturing intimate animal interactions due to the Z6iii’s fast frame rate and buffer capabilities. 🐊
• Discusses the advantage of using different focus modes to handle various wildlife photography challenges. 📷
• Shares how specific background choices enhance the subject, adding depth and drama to wildlife photography. 🎨

Key Takeaways

• Steve Perry uses a pre-production Nikon Z6iii to capture amazing wildlife shots during a limited 24-hour window. ⏰
• His photography adventure takes place in Orlando Wetlands, a location known for its unpredictable wildlife activity. 🌿
• The camera's 20 frames per second and unlimited buffer are crucial for capturing dynamic bird movements. 🐦
• Perry emphasizes the importance of positioning, shutter speed, and background when photographing wildlife. 📸
• He shares tips on using subject detection and how manual focus can sometimes be more effective. 🎯
• Perry advocates for using black and white photography in challenging lighting conditions for striking results. 🖤
• The importance of being prepared and adapting quickly to the environment to capture unique photo opportunities. 📅

Overview

Steve Perry shares an engaging and insightful look into the world of wildlife photography using the Nikon Z6iii. Broadcasting from his camper during an extended adventure, Perry illustrates how spontaneity and readiness result in remarkable photos. He emphasizes that while having the right gear helps, understanding lighting, composition, and subject behavior are equally important.

In a whirlwind 24-hour period at Orlando Wetlands, Perry pushes the limits of the Z6iii, highlighting its impressive 20 frames per second and robust buffer, which allow him to capture dynamic bird movements without missing a beat. He provides detailed tips on adjusting shutter speeds and focusing techniques to keep pace with the fast-paced wildlife action.

Perry also delves into how strategic positioning and adapting to unpredictable environments are vital for photographing wildlife. Whether choosing black and white for harsh lighting or ensuring backgrounds enhance the subject, his advice is practical and imparted with the enthusiasm of a passionate photographer keen to share his experiences.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Initial Setup In the introduction titled 'Introduction and Initial Setup,' Steve from Be Hun Gallery introduces himself from his mobile headquarters in a camper, where he is currently on an 8-week extended trip. The video is a part of a series related to the z63 setup guide for wildlife photography. This specific video will focus on the f aspect of the guide.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Story Behind the Photos Overview The chapter titled 'Story Behind the Photos Overview' delves into the behind-the-scenes of the photos taken during the Z63 review. The narrator addresses questions and explains the field techniques employed to capture the images swiftly across various cameras. The chapter emphasizes useful tips applicable to any photography enthusiast. It also teases the reader to stay until the end for the narrator's favorite photo.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Pre-Production Camera and Location Details In this chapter, the focus is on pre-production considerations, including camera and location details. The location discussed is the Orlando Wetlands, which is known to be unpredictable. It may sometimes offer great opportunities for photography, but it can also be less productive depending on the time spent there. The availability of the camera was limited, yet resulted in a substantial number of good-quality photos, largely due to a stroke of luck.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Limited Time with the Camera In this chapter titled 'Limited Time with the Camera,' the speaker discusses the challenges faced due to having limited time with a camera. The animals were active, which was beneficial for filming, but the time to use the camera was restricted to just 24 hours. During this period, the tasks included shooting b-roll, examining the camera, setting up menus for usability, shooting Adamos footage, filming menu footage for demonstration purposes, and practicing with the camera. Consequently, the actual time available for shooting the main photos was constrained to just a brief period.
• 02:00 - 06:00: Photo Story: Spoonbill In the chapter titled "Photo Story: Spoonbill," the narrator shares the behind-the-scenes story of capturing photographs of a spoonbill. Over the course of a few hours across an evening and a morning, the photos were taken. The narrator focuses on one particular picture where the spoonbill is looking directly into the camera, highlighting the impressive sharpness of the bird's eye and the unique wing position captured. The narrator praises the performance of the camera used, a Z63, in capturing sharp images throughout the series.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Photo Story: Anhinga with Fish In this chapter, the speaker discusses the challenges of photographing birds, particularly those with long beaks like the Anhinga, as they fly towards the camera. The focus often mistakenly locks on the wings or face instead of the eyes. Despite the Z63 camera not achieving perfect focus every time, the photographer managed to capture several sharp images of the Anhinga’s eyes, allowing choice in selecting the preferred wing position. Additionally, shooting at 20 frames per second in raw format presented no buffer issues, as proven in a previous demonstration.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Photo Story: Vulture in Bright Light In this chapter, the author discusses the challenges and techniques of capturing a photograph of a vulture using the Nikon Z63 camera. The emphasis is on ensuring a high shutter speed when photographing birds flying towards the camera as opposed to panning shots where the photographer moves along with the subject. This high shutter speed helps maintain clarity and sharpness of the bird's image by compensating for the rapid movement towards the lens. The photographer elaborates on the art of keeping the bird in focus by maintaining its position within the frame during these dynamic shots.
• 12:00 - 14:00: Photo Story: Spoonbills Interaction The chapter titled 'Photo Story: Spoonbills Interaction' discusses techniques for capturing sharp images of birds, specifically spoonbills, in flight. It emphasizes the challenge of photographing a bird flying straight toward the camera, as opposed to panning shots. The key takeaway is the importance of using an adequately high shutter speed to stop the action and capture clear images under such conditions. The narrator humorously adds that unless one can run backwards fast while photographing, they don't have the advantage of panning to aid in capturing the image.
• 14:00 - 17:00: Photo Story: Gator with Open Mouth This chapter titled 'Photo Story: Gator with Open Mouth' discusses the photographer's experience and considerations while capturing a photograph of a bird in flight at Orlando wetlands. The narrative includes technical details such as the ISO setting, shutter speed, and the choice of background which was not coincidental but a deliberate choice on the photographer's part. The chapter also mentions the different levels of bird activity in different areas of the wetlands, influencing the decision on where to position for the best photo opportunity despite slower action in chosen location due to a more appealing background.
• 17:00 - 18:00: Photo Story: Two Spoonbills on Branch In this chapter titled 'Photo Story: Two Spoonbills on Branch,' the discussion centers around the art of wildlife photography, specifically capturing the perfect shot. The key to a successful photograph is not merely finding the subject but being strategically positioned and envisioning the desired outcome. The chapter describes setting up the shot with a vibrant green background and a blurry distant island, leveraging natural lighting to enhance the scene. After patiently waiting, a spoonbill flew into the frame, completing the image and exemplifying the patience and preparation required for wildlife photography.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Photo Story: White Ibis in Backlight The chapter titled "Photo Story: White Ibis in Backlight" discusses the photographer's experience attempting to photograph spoonbills. The photographer explains their preference for a green background, as cooler colors like blues and greens recede while warmer colors like pinks come forward, providing a sense of dimension. The chapter also includes a mention of the z63 camera's performance in capturing the shot.
• 19:00 - 20:00: Photo Story: Juvenile Night Heron The chapter titled 'Photo Story: Juvenile Night Heron' discusses the challenges and unique experiences faced by photographers capturing wildlife. The narrator highlights a particular photograph featuring a fish in the mouth of an Anhinga, noting the unusual manner in which the fish is being swallowed. This photo opportunity required a combination of skill, luck, and quick reflexes from the photographer.
• 20:00 - 26:00: Photo Story: Rim-Lit Anhinga In this chapter titled 'Photo Story: Rim-Lit Anhinga', the narrator recounts an experience of spotting an Anhinga bird from a distance, engaged with a fish. Seizing the opportunity for a great photograph, they rushed towards the scene, being careful not to scare the bird away. As they approached, it seemed like the moment might have been missed, but the narrator quickly focused the camera in time to capture a final shot of the fish's head sticking out of the bird's mouth. The photograph turned out to be remarkable.
• 26:00 - 27:00: Conclusion and Call to Action In the conclusion and call to action chapter, the author reflects on an experience while using a Nikon camera with Auto AF (autofocus) and subject detection. The autofocus mistakenly locked onto a person's eye instead of a fish, which was the intended subject. This led the author to contemplate the mechanism and behavior of the autofocus system during the brief shooting session. The author also shares a field technique tip for Nikon users, particularly when shooting birds, explaining the importance of maintaining focus at the same distance as the subject for optimal results.

Nikon Z6iii - The Story Behind The Photos (A Goldmine Of Field Techniques) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hey everyone Steve from be hun Gallery here coming to you from the mobile BCG headquarters AKA my camper I'm actually out on an extended 8-week trip as I write the z63 setup guide for wildlife photography so you'll see a few of these videos coming to you from the camper but today's video is going to be about the f
• 00:30 - 01:00 photos the story behind the photos that I took on my initial z63 review I've had a lot of people ask questions about those and before you jump away from this video thinking this isn't for you no matter what camera you're shooting I have a ton of advice in here just basically field techniques that I used with the z63 to get those photos in such a short time so make sure you stick around especially the last photo that's my favorite one I really want you make sure you don't miss that one that's really good but a few things first first I have to remind you that it was a pre
• 01:00 - 01:30 production camera so that's out of the way number two the location everyone was asking it was Orlando Wetlands however Orlando Wetlands is hot and cold so just because I had a great you know 24 hours or so there doesn't mean that's always going to apply sometimes it's really good sometimes it's really slow it can vary by the week and number three the amount of time I had the camera because this is kind of where a lot of these questions come in is how did you get that many photos that look so good with you know that limited amount of time and the truth is that we got really lucky
• 01:30 - 02:00 because the animals were very active so that helps a ton but the amount of time we had was actually very limited we had the camera for roughly 24 hours and during that time we had to shoot b-roll we had to examine the camera I had to set the menus up so I could use the camera I shot all sorts of adamos footage too I shot uh footage of the menus so that I could show you guys that and you know I had to practice with the camera a little bit so the actual shooting time for the majority of these photos was basically I had a couple
• 02:00 - 02:30 hours one evening and about two and a half hours one morning and that's pretty much where I got all of these photos so that's the background let's jump in and let's start talking about the story behind these photos so the first photo I want to talk about is this spoon bill here because I love the way this one worked out he's looking straight at the camera his eyeball is tack sharp I love his wing position and the z63 just nailed it with this particular photo now this wasn't the only photo in the series but I have to say I was impressed with the number of sharp eyeballs I have
• 02:30 - 03:00 because the thing is a lot of times when you have a bird especially with a long belt and it's coming straight at the camera the camera tends to focus back on the wings it tends to focus on the front of the face or the bell and sometimes it just doesn't quite get the eye and the z63 did not get 100% hit right here either but I had plenty of nice sharp eyeballs as it was coming towards me enough so that I could actually pick the wing position that I wanted so that worked out really well I was on 20 frames per second raw and you know no buffer problems as I demonstrated in that that other video so that worked
• 03:00 - 03:30 really well so all of the action components of the z63 really came together for this as for the shot itself there are some field techniques that I put into play here the first is making sure I had enough shutter speed when you have a bird flying at the camera you always need more shutter speed than if you're panning along because remember when you're panning along what's what you're doing is you're keeping the bird in position in the frame well theoretically you're doing that that's the idea is that you're keeping the bird in roughly the same position in the frame or doing your best to so you're playing a pivotal role in keeping the bird sharp you're panning along you're keeping it in the same position so you
• 03:30 - 04:00 can often use slower shutter speed something like a spoon Bill like this I've gotten shots that were tack sharp at 800 even 500th of a second as I was panning along but when a bird is flying straight at the camera you're not panning anymore you don't have any advantage there with the pan so you have to stop that action as he's flying towards you because you're not able to help the camera because it's coming from a direction that you're not panning unless you can run backwards really fast in which case then you know you're way cooler than me but anyway so you need your shutter speed so you have to make sure that you can you have enough shutter speed for Ely I had plenty of
• 04:00 - 04:30 light as you can see ISO 360 here so 3200 of a second wasn't bad probably in retrospect I maybe could have even bumped it to 4,000 with a bird flying towards the camera uh background here I love this background but it wasn't an accident there was an area there there's a boardwalk at Orlando wetlands and there's an Island area there and I was to the right of that and the action that day anyway to the right of it was actually slower than the action to the left there's a lot more birds happening to the left but the background was better there
• 04:30 - 05:00 and that's one of the keys I think to a great Wildlife photograph it's not just about finding the subject and getting a shot it's about putting yourself in a position where you can get the kind of shot that you want where you kind of think it through a little bit now in this case I knew there was this nice bright green background there's all the there's a little island back there a little real distant so it's not very sharp it's nice and blurry and the sun was hitting it so I knew it was going to look like this I just needed a bird to come in and sure enough after about 15 20 minutes this guy flew straight towards the camera and he made the shot so the other thing I like about this is
• 05:00 - 05:30 that I knew I was photographing spoon bills or I was attempting to I mean I would have taken another bird too but spoon bills you know were the target here and I also wanted that green background because cooler colors like blues and greens tend to recede in the photo and warmer colors like pinks tend to come forward so it gives you a sense of Dimension here too he kind of pops out a little bit more than had I had a warmer background there so just a few little bits of advice for this shot but I have to say the z63 did a really good job here as far as doing its part we can
• 05:30 - 06:00 only do so much as photographers we have to have our cameras you know making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do as well and I think it worked out really well let's move on this is another one I really really like if you notice we have a fish hanging out of this and hinga's mouth he's kind of on his last uh I guess breath there if you want to think of it that way just before he gets swallowed and it's kind of unusual because most of the time they want to go down head first it was weird to see him trying to push it down that way but beyond that getting the shot was a little bit tricky it was just a lot of luck and a little bit of running on my
• 06:00 - 06:30 part what happened was I saw him from about a 100 yards or so messing with this fish so I said I better get over there because this is going to be a great shot I had no idea it was going to turn out like this but I wanted to get messing with the fish so I ran over there as fast as I could without you know I didn't want to scare him up so as I got closer I had to slow down a little bit so as I got there I sort of thought I had missed it because I could see he was just about done but I focused on the bird and sure enough that fish's head was still sticking out so I I was able to get this last shot interesting
• 06:30 - 07:00 when I was looking through the camera the z63 actually focused on his eye and not the eye of the fish and uh it it was interesting because I was kind of thinking about that as I was shooting I got a several of these shots I was shooting a quick series there this lasted for maybe 10 15 seconds so I had time to notice where the AF point was going there this was just regular Auto AF by the way and by the way if you are using Nikon and you're using Auto AF with subject detection especially with birds one trick there I'm going to throw another field technique at you one cool trick is to make sure that you're kind of focused at the same distance as the
• 07:00 - 07:30 subject it'll pick it right up most of the time especially if there's not much else around if you're using again Auto AF but anyhow back to the uh photo here but it was a little bit tricky because I had to watch the light so this is probably about a minus one stop I apologize as I said I'm on the road I don't have my original photos with me I have these slides from the original review here but I believe this is about minus one the big trick here is just not to clip when you get those uh backgrounds because you can see he is lit really well and the background's very dark so I had to make sure that I wasn't going to clip him and blow him out so that's like a minus one or so for
• 07:30 - 08:00 exposure compensation of course you could do manual and kind of do the same type of a thing but that's you know kind of the main thing I wanted to talk about with this just you know sometimes when you see those rare moments you have to make sure you get over there and get to them before they pass you by so let's move on so next we have this vulture here with his wings all spread out and the reason I'm including this is simple because sometimes we get into a situation where we have very bright light and the angle is pretty harsh this is about 2 and a half hours after
• 08:00 - 08:30 sunrise and you can look at the settings here 3200 of a second 56 and it's only ISO 160 so it was very bright this angle of the light was very steep it was very challenging and in color I didn't think it worked at all but one little kind of Mantra that I go by is in challenging light think black and white so that's what I do when the light is getting kind of harsh getting hard to work with with color I start thinking about black and white possibilities and that's what worked out here real well for this vulture as far as the z63 part in this
• 08:30 - 09:00 particular photo it did catch the eye no problem whatsoever again I was just using uh Auto AF with this one and I pre-focused on the bird a little bit and it grabbed right onto the eye no problem at all and plenty of detail there this is a frame filling shot and I did have to bring up some shadows in that and the dynamic range on the z63 allowed me especially at ISO 160 allowed me to do so without really killing those Shadows too much so this worked out absolutely great I was very impressed with the quality of the file from the camera and
• 09:00 - 09:30 uh I'm very happy I found this guy I thought he was pretty cool okay so we have a couple of spoon bills here kind of having it out with each other it looks like they are but what basically what's happening is the bottom one is a juvenile and the top one is the parent and he was begging for food and uh they had this really great moment here though where the wings were just perfect on each one of them and I really really am glad I got it I got lucky I should have stopped down I was at 56 I probably should have stopped down a little bit more I certainly had the light to do it but um fortunately they were both on the same focal plane both eyes are nice and
• 09:30 - 10:00 sharp in this photo now one of the advantages here that the Z6 did this was on just regular subject detection animal detection and one of the advantages here though is that 20 frames per second electronic shutter this is where it really came in handy and that unlimited buffer both of those things actually came in really handy here because this went on for a while I have probably 100 shots maybe 150 shots of these two flapping their wings now this is the one I liked out of all of those and I had some others that were very very close I wasn't sure my favorite was but this one
• 10:00 - 10:30 I think uh W won the day there but one of the advantages of having that basically bottomless buffer and having that high frame rate is it gives you tons of wing positions tons of opportunities to get the shot that you really want to get that perfect moment and that's what we're really after with those higher frame rates a lot of times people will say you know you don't need 20 frames a second just time it better and things like that but the truth is it's impossible to just perfectly time it when birds are flapping their wings rapidly you're not going to get that
• 10:30 - 11:00 shot and higher frame rates allow you to get all of those little tiny moments and then pick the one that works best and the unlimited buffer with this camera especially with that again that Del fast deling card as I mentioned in the z63 review but with that fast ding card in there I basically have a bottomless buffer so I can just shoot away as long as I need to and although it doesn't happen very often every now and then you come into a situation like this where you really need to just fire away because you don't know what you're going to get one of my rules is if you see
• 11:00 - 11:30 something cool happening in your viewfinder keep your finger on that shutter I see so many people let up on that shutter release and then they miss the shots keep firing when you see neat stuff another thing that helped this shot with the z63 was that nice low ISO I was using here it has really good dynamic range as far as I can tell without doing like you know formal tests but the dynamic range was really nice I was able to pull up the Shadows under the wings and some of these Wing areas it's a little bit darker in the original Raw image than what you see here and I
• 11:30 - 12:00 was able to pull up those Shadows real well no problem at all no real dramatic increase in noise nothing that you know made it unusable it was very very easy to manage these raw files and as I mentioned in the z63 review I don't have what I think is a completed profile for this camera at least not at the time I was post-processing this so I mean you know this worked out really really well I'm very impressed with the files from this camera and like I say when you have like 20 frames a second bottomless buffer in fact I would in this
• 12:00 - 12:30 particular case I would say I would rather have that z63 than even something like my Z8 or z9 because of the buffer I can just fire away and I don't have to worry about running out of time as they're trying to balance and flap around on this twig so on to the next one next we have this Gator because I wanted to throw in at least one thing that wasn't a bird and in this case I got all the way down to the ground as you can see to get this shot but there's a little bit of a story behind it so here's the thing when you see a gator
• 12:30 - 13:00 with its mouth open basically what it's doing is it's trying to cool off a little bit it's trying to regulate its body temperature and in this case I didn't want him to run away because a lot of times as you approach a gator or a croc or any animal like this as you approach them if they're getting a little nervous that mouth closes and you lose the shot so I'm at 600 millimet so I'm a little bit away from I'm not like on top of him here but I did have to act fast so what I did is I got all the way down on my belly I used the viewfinder in this one I went to single point AF I put it right on the eye and the reason I
• 13:00 - 13:30 did that is because I do not trust subject detection in a case like this with kind of a weird looking face and eye it's just not designed for it it might get it sometimes but I don't want to miss the shot so single point AF is still sometimes the most reliable way to go so I kept it at F4 to keep that nice soft look between the foreground and the background but by the way when I get down really low like that one thing that that does is what you see here in this photo it really can soften a background because that background is very close to him and that foreground is very close to
• 13:30 - 14:00 him but by getting very low it compresses it and it makes it very very soft and you get this sort of 3d effect with your subject so that's one of the key reasons to get down and that's where the flip screen comes in now for me I have to mess with these reading glasses if I want to use a flip screen so this was too fast this I was worried that he was going to move so I didn't want to Fumble around with glasses so I just flopped on my belly and used the viewfinder but if you don't want to go down on your belly and I do this all the time too use the flip screen all the
• 14:00 - 14:30 time if you don't want to go down on your valy to use the viewfinder that's where these flip screens really really come in handy you can flip it out and you can get really low there and get the shots you want just move it over takes a little bit of practice but I highly highly recommend learning and kind of getting used to using that rear view screen because sometimes for shots like this instead of getting on your belly you know if it's muddy or something or if there's you know fire ants which in this case I was lucky I didn't get bit probably because there's quite a few of them around there but you can get down there maybe just on your knee and get those nice low angle shots like this
• 14:30 - 15:00 just you know using that flip screen but anyhow uh I just again just mostly wanted to include that and give you a few tips for you know getting down low using that flip screen and what to do in a case like this by the way as another side note if you're using subject detection one of the biggest mistakes I see is people using subject detection for everything and never letting it go if it's working then that's great if it's working then just go ahead and use it it's fine a lot of times you're going to find especially like with bird subject it works really really well but
• 15:00 - 15:30 if you find that it's not working or it's hesitating or it's going to the eye then it's going to the face and nose turn it off and use something else like in this case single point so just a quick tip there for you and uh let's move on next we have this one and it's definitely one of my favorites but it's a little bit trickier than it first appeared so I'm walking along I see these two and I love the graphic feel of this with that brown stick right there and how it jutting out right down there at the bottom how it could come in at
• 15:30 - 16:00 the bottom of the frame I saw all of this as I was walking up I thought oh this is going to be cool with the spoon bills on it very very neat shot plus we have that cool background with the blue sky with the warmer birds and even the warmer stick so they kind of pop out from the blue really nice for me and anybody who follows me or knows me knows that I'm not a real big fan of blue skies but every now and then I'll make an exception when it works and I think this works really well however this is trickier than it seems because the top bird was actually a little bit farther back than the bottom bird it doesn't necessarily look like that in a flat
• 16:00 - 16:30 photo but in reality that Branch kind of goes to the back and they were not anywhere near the same focal plane they well they were near it but they were far enough apart that no amount of stopping down was going to help now anybody who shot multiple animals in a frame knows that the depth the field for critical sharpness is Razor thin so unless those animals are right there very very close to the same focal plane you know you know f8 F-16 just not going to save you just not going to happen you have to do a little bit of a cheat which is what I did here so what I did is I put the z63
• 16:30 - 17:00 into wide large and I had subject detection on and what I did is I had the camera vertical and I moved my wide large AF area right up to that top bird I focused it found his eye just like that I shot off a quick burst I kept that same composition as best I could and then I moved that wide large AF area right down to that second bird and once again it found the eye just instantly I shot off a quick burst and I had my two different Focus ranges and then I just
• 17:00 - 17:30 combine those two in Photoshop and if you want to learn how to do that I have a video above click the card there and it'll take you that video and you can see how that technique works but it's a really good workaround for those times when you encounter a situation where you have animals on two different focal planes because again A lot of times stopping down just is not going to work unless they're very very close together so why not Auto though here because I've been using autoa quite a bit as you know with these shots and the reason I use the wide large is that it allow owed me to isolate each bird individually if I
• 17:30 - 18:00 would have used auto it may have just stuck to that top bird I may never have been able to coax it down to the bottom bird and wide large allowed me to say hey I want you to focus on this top bird and then I want you to focus on this bottom bird and like say each time it found the eye no problem at all so it worked out really really well next we have this white ivis and this one was one of our first shots of the only morning that we had the camera and it was really neat we were walking down the trail and this guy's just kind of walking across this grassy area here and the light was coming in from behind him
• 18:00 - 18:30 it was still pretty early I think this is maybe 10 minutes after Sunrise so this was very very early and that's exactly when I like to do these types of shots these backlight shots anytime I'm out around Sunrise I'm always thinking backlight usually from sunrise to maybe 20 minutes half hour after I'm really really thinking backlight I might do it afterwards and I did do it here and you'll see that with the LA very last shot but my favorite time to do backlight is that first 20 minutes half hour after sunrise and this is one example here though where I actually had
• 18:30 - 19:00 my stuck together and I was able to take my glasses I had my glasses on and I actually got the camera down and I was using the flip screen which was really nice because it was really dewy out and I would have had my shirt absolutely soaked had I gotten my on my belly here so the flip screen saved the day here and I just basically put it on auto AF I pre-focused at about the distance he was so that it wouldn't hunt around too much and I held the camera down there and I just basically followed him along and I was just shooting uh let AO F let's subject detection find the eye it was
• 19:00 - 19:30 doing perfectly well with that I was firing off at about 20 frames a second as he was walking just short control burst I don't usually drop my frame rate I almost always use it at the maximum frame rate simply because you never know when you're going to get one of those really really special moments for example you don't know if you know you get the right head turn for example with this guy here he was looking the wrong way most of the time and then he kind of went back and forth and that's when I got this shot so again those short control 20 frame per second person surpr surprising I'm always shocked how often
• 19:30 - 20:00 I find it to be useful even with slower static subjects like this as for the file itself man this worked out really well this is ISO 1000 as you can see here and basically what I had to do was bring him up by about a stop on the camera side of the bird because he was a little bit underexposed over there you don't want to blow your exposure here basically most of the time when I'm dealing with backlight I'm going to under expose a little in this case I don't think I had negative compensation because this whole scene is very bright so the camera was kind of naturally underexposing it a little bit so I let
• 20:00 - 20:30 that go so I was shooting straight up without any negative compensation in here but it's still you're going to have a shadow side of an animal and you're going to want to bring that up a little bit you don't want to go crazy but you want to bring that up a little bit and you want to keep your ISO as low as you can so 1,000 is a little higher than I would normally like but the files from the z63 here are so good I was able to pull that up no problem at all it didn't get excessively noisy it looks really you know looks really good no problem at all there and one of the things I really like about this is how the how the
• 20:30 - 21:00 sunlight is kind of coming through his bill over here and uh just overall just I really enjoy that chat I really like that that kind of soft morning glow that we have going on here so and the uh the z63 definitely uh helped me get the shot there that that worked out real well let's move on to the next one next we have this Juvenile nighton and as you can see it's ISO 4500 I did Jack up the shutter speed a little bit and I dropped the f- stop a little bit I wanted to see how this handled real world kind of higher ISO situations and
• 21:00 - 21:30 I think it handled it really really well looking at this shot as you can see it looks very very clean now I did use my Lightroom D noise technique if you haven't watched that video make sure you check out the card above because you're going to want to learn how to use Lightroom to D noise like this because you can make basically ISO 6,400 look like 400 so make sure you check out that video but what's more with this shot is not only does it look really really clean at ISO 4500 this was basically when I got it back to the computer I had to crop it more than I would have liked
• 21:30 - 22:00 this is about a DX crop and for equivalent output noise this should look a lot worse than it does because the more you crop the worse that noise is going to look compared to had you shot it and not had to crop it had you been able to use the full frame so the fact that this cleaned up so nicely and there's so much detail here really really speaks to how well this handles lower light higher ISO situation so I think the z63 did really well here as for setting uh once again I'm shooting
• 22:00 - 22:30 autoa pre focusing to about where I expected the bird to come in I you don't have to be super precise with this you just have to not be way off and the camera locks right on uh subject detection found the face and eye no problem as you can see here there's lots of detail and again it really does surprisingly well in low light I'm looking forward to having like a production profile production camera so I could really kind of even put this to the test more but my feeling right now is that this is going to be a heck of a good lowlight camera and finally my favorite chat this
• 22:30 - 23:00 anhinga with its mouth open and this is a good story here so I see this anhinga and he's rimlet and this is about an hour and a half after Sunrise so the Sun is up over some trees and these trees are behind him just I mean basically throwing black shadows as you can see in the frame so the sun's fairly high and truthfully it's a little Beyond when I would normally try to shoot backlight or Rim light but I was looking over from my position and I could see that he was nicely rimlet so I thought oh I'm going to walk over there so as I'm walking over there I'm kind of messing with my settings I think I knocked down to like
• 23:00 - 23:30 negative 2/3 of a stop just to make sure I wasn't going to clip the highlights that's one of the big things with something like this when you have this Rim light you don't want to really clip these highlights at least not too much a little clipping you know you could live with that because they're supposed to be bright no one's going to call you out on that but you don't want to like completely clip it like in the back area there you see by his neck you don't want to have any of those clipped you want to make sure that you can see those feather details you don't want that just to be a white streak but anyway so I'm going up to this guy so I'm dialing in -2/3 and I
• 23:30 - 24:00 did not have a chance to adjust my shutter speed ideally I would have liked to have been a little lower ISO so I had a little more flexibility in the raw file should I need it whenever I'm dealing with back lit or Rim lit type shots I like to shoot as low of an ISO as I can because it gives me more dynamic range and more flexibility back home on the computer to kind of bring up shadows and things like that but what happened is I saw him kind of moving his head up and down and I thought oh what's he going to do is he going to yawn so I get in there I position the camera and remember this is a pretty heavily backl
• 24:00 - 24:30 scene z63 Believe It or Not catches right onto his eye because his eye was actually I I brightened the area of his head on the camera facing side up a little bit so you could see it his eye was basically in a dark shadow and the camera just caught it no problem at all nailed the eye and as I'm kind of framing up thinking about dropping my shutter speed he yawns and I'm just Blast away at 20 frames a second as he's yawning and one of the advantages that 20 frames a second gives you is that you have a lot of mouth positions as he was
• 24:30 - 25:00 opening and closing that mouth so I was able to pick that widest moment right here and so overall I was very impressed out the z63 handled this particular shot but I was also really really happy to find this in hinga but by the if you ever are in a situation where you're trying to do Rim light like this probably the biggest bit of advice I can give you is find a dark background you have to have it up against a dark background for it to work the best I mean you could do it up against other backgrounds but I find that dark backgrounds work really really well for shots like this when you're trying to do Rim light and the other interesting
• 25:00 - 25:30 thing here is that the sun was kind of up basically the way his top of his bill is facing here is kind of pointing up towards the Sun so it actually illuminated his throat if you look and obviously this was not planned because I didn't know he was going to yawn but if you look it actually illuminated some of the skin on the side there and you can kind of see through the feathers there you can see kind of some pink over there which is really really neat but but at any rate if you ever get a chance to do some Rim light stuff absolutely go for it keep your ISO low look for for a dark background and again you're going to
• 25:30 - 26:00 need the sun more or less behind the subject and uh that's pretty much the main things another thing that really helps with Rim light this obviously does not have it but one of the things that really helps with Rim light is if you can find something that has a little bit more fuzz and fur to it or has feathers that are sticking up a little bit more so you can really catch that light but in this case the light was harsh enough it actually worked in my favor for a change the light was harsh enough that it really made the shot come together so but anyhow that's the uh was my favorite one there I really like that that's
• 26:00 - 26:30 actually a fullframe shot too so I hope that uh I hope you found this video useful and if you enjoy this kind of stuff make sure you sign up for my free email newsletter so you never miss any of these tips tricks or advice that I have and also keep in mind that I am working on that z63 setup guide and people on the email newsletter are going to be the first ones to know when it's out so make sure you sign up over at the site today please subscribe to the Channel please share this with your friends and thank you so much for watching have a great day