Drinks With Steve #3

hey everyone welcome to hey everyone welcome to the live stream there my little counter wasn't working thank you for joining me today and this is going to be a photography q a but before we begin i do want to send out a great big thank you to everybody who has shown up here but also to everybody who has supported me as i've kind of struggled with covet here as many of you know i was hospitalized with code but i was in the icu i was there for about two weeks and i almost didn't survive the experience and i just want to say thank you the outpouring from the photography community was absolutely overwhelming and i just wanted to pass along my heartfelt thanks to everybody it really meant a lot we probably had a thousand at least messages from people wishing me well and wishing you know you know fast recovery and all that and i really do appreciate that as well as we had a ton of people make contributions at the website to help us out and lots of people bought books and video workshops and stuff all of that really meant a lot so i do really really appreciate it and if i do look a little bit smaller i lost about 20 pounds during the experience but i am getting much better when i first came home i was barely able to walk to the bathroom when i had oxygen and everything else and as you can see doing much better i actually went on a 1.3 mile hike yesterday so coming along good so that's about all i want to talk about with the covet though so let's focus on some photography stuff so if you guys have some questions i imagine you do go ahead and start posting them in the comments and i will do my best to answer them so one of the questions i saw earlier that i'm going to address now i'm waiting for some other ones to come in when someone was asking is it time to go mirrorless yet that was one of the comments i saw before we started and honestly it's a really good question and i think it's something that a lot of people are struggling with right now you have a dslr outfit and you're like should i should i make that plunge or am i too early and there's so many factors that go into that it's very difficult to say when the right time for mirrorless is and a lot of this is going to depend on the types of photography the types of subjects that you shoot so and your you know um financial status too as far as that goes because it's not a cheap thing to do especially if you're jumping systems so it's kind of something that is going to be up to an individual and you're going to have to really evaluate what you're doing i think the best thing to do is look at what you're doing now and look at the advantages that mirrorless would give you or if there are any advantages and ask yourself you know is mirrorless going to actually bring anything new or anything better is there going to be pictures i can get easier or that i couldn't get before with my dslrs if i switch to mirrorless if the answer is no it might be a good time just to kind of wait and see because right now i kind of feel like mirrorless is right on that cusp of just about there it's just about to take overtake dslrs in some cases like with the sony a1 and maybe the sony a92 and the canon r5 it has in many ways overtaking dslrs and even in some cases even the nikon system there's a few things you can do with the z cameras that you just can't do with dslrs so you know if some of those advantages actually would impact your photography in a meaningful way then yeah maybe it's time to start considering them but if not i've been telling everybody right now everything's still sorting out we don't know who's going to be the the best for mirrorless as time goes on we really don't everything's very new and i think the people that can wait if you're not in a hurry i think that's probably the best advice just to hold back and see what comes from nikon sony and canon before you dive into mirrorless so that's my advice right now so hopefully that helps so i'm looking through the comments here uh i'm gonna try to backtrack a little bit there's a lot of them came in there uh let's see here let's see here am i excited for the nikon d9 i think you mean the z9 yeah i am excited to see that camera i'm hoping that nikon can deliver on it i don't know anything about it i've had a lot of questions i kind of want to address this real quick i have a lot of emails to come and say steve what do you think about the z9 what's going to happen i have no inside information at all none at all nikon does not share anything with me so what you know from nikon rumors is exactly what i know let's see here just looking through it any chance of workshops in north america that might happen we are starting to think about doing workshops here in the states it's getting tougher and tougher to do international stuff especially with all the coveted stuff and depending on how that pans out we may do fewer overseas stuff and we might start doing some stuff in north america the best way to get on our workshops is to make sure you're on my email newsletter at the site if there's going to be something announced that's going to be in there let's see him tom's asking does the d4s have group focus on a single point an fn on a button like you do with the a50 nope that camera does not support it uh the only cameras that actually allow you to do that are the d500 d5 d6 and d850 at the moment let's see here so i'm just kind of skimming through these i know you guys have a ton of questions i apologize in advance i'm not going to be able to get to all of them so i'm just kind of skimming through the ones that i see not just here but i also encounter my email box a lot uh let's see sorry about the pauses here let's see that's a good one there i think i lost it uh someone's asking let's see oh that's a good question yeah the 428 versus 600 f4 which would you choose that's a hard question guys i think every wildlife photographer anytime you're trying to you're going to make that step it's a big glass and you're like okay which way do i go here because there's three options every single time you have the 428 500 f4 600 f4 which way should you go and that's a hard hard question my rule of thumb has always been that you should pick the lens that you can use without teleconverters most of the time teleconverters had a whole nother level of complexity they add another layer of something that can go wrong if that makes sense so for the most part i i use the 600 f4 i've been very happy with that doing general wildlife photography not just in north america but also as you know you go to costa rica in africa that has been a really great lens and i have the sony 600 f4 as well and they're yeah the nikon and sony 600 f4s are just phenomenal they're a little bit big so you know that's something to consider too if you know size weight and travel capacity is a problem the 600 f-4s can sometimes be troublesome uh 504 is a good compromise because it gives you a lot of focal length but it's a lot lighter and it's a lot easier to travel with and it takes teleconverters really well too the 428 the tempting thing there is that you have a 428 and then you put a teleconverter on at a 1.4 and you have like a 560. then you put another teleconverter 2x on it and you have an 800.56 and it's like wow you have kind of three lenses in one now i have seen very mixed results with that for some people that works great and they love it and they swear by it and that is the way they go and that's great i have had more people though and i people on my own workshops and that i've seen this they've tried that combination and they're constantly fighting with teleconverters and they're like it's sharper with this one than that one and you know i'm having a hard time i'm back focusing with this one now it just seems like there's just when you start adding teleconverters as part of the main menu there it seems like it can be especially if you have a couple of them mixed in there i've seen again i've just seen mixed results for me i think it makes more sense just to pick the lens that you think you're going to use the focal length that you think you're going to use most of the time without a teleconverter let's see here sorry i got a holes in my mouth guys just to keep my coughing down sometimes my coughing starts up i didn't want to be hacking all over you here let's see this is a good one here howard asks thoughts about the d850 and crop mode versus the d500 for bird photography um i think uh hopefully that worked i had a little error message come up there my connection was unstable hopefully this is still going uh i'll tell you my experience with the df50 and d500 i've had both cameras when i got the d850 i got the grip for it so i was getting nine frames per second i had my d5 battery in there and stuff and i think the and after that i don't think i ever really use the d500 anymore i just used the d850 and then i cropped down to dx size like you know manually most of the time just on the computer down to that size and the reason i like the d850 over the d500 for that is autofocus is pretty close the d500 might have a little edge but it's close enough for most purposes i i say i didn't really use the d500 after getting the d850 but the reason i liked that particular setup with the d50 over the d500 is because if i'm out shooting and i can fill the frame great i get all those full frame advantages right so that's really cool but if something's a little farther away and maybe i'd have to crop to dx well guess what that was just like using the d500 which i also liked so i had the best of both worlds kind of in one camera so that's what i uh that's one of the reasons i kind of favor that one so let's see here oh that's a good one do i feel do you feel using an app like luminar to replace photos in the sky is ethical uh for me i i think ethical is is tricky everybody has their own line that they will or won't cross for me i think that's go that's a bridge too far i don't like replacing skies uh i know how to do it i could do it without any of the assistance from you know the software but the thing is i like to represent what's there and truthfully it's just more work that i really want to do too you know most of the time if i don't like the sky i'll just pick another shot i have literally on my hard drive i have probably half a million shots sitting there so i just i'm to the point anymore i shoot so much stuff that at least when i'm out i have been shooting anything lately obviously but uh at least when i'm out i'm shooting so much stuff that there's no reason to to do it but yeah i'm not really a big fan of people replacing skies i i i don't know that that's you know what's next i guess you know so i'm yeah not not a big fan let's see oh let's see here let's see sorry my comments are kind of jumping around [Music] apologize for the delay here as i look uh let's see here someone's asking about what's the uh what's the problem for why nikon is still struggling to get the z system on par with canon or sony even after two years uh it's better i can tell you the nikon system is better i think canon and sony just have a little bit more money behind them i really do i think that's what it is i think they're just a little bit ahead but i also think that you're going to see nikon have a what i want to call a d3 moment if you remember nikon was kind of struggling back with dslrs and then they said hey you know we're gonna we're not gonna do this anymore we're gonna really you know knock everyone's socks off and they did they put out the d3 and from then on it was like oh my gosh you know there's no problem here anymore they were you know class leading across the board for years and i think we're gonna see something similar with the xenon nikon tends to be kind of a conservative company and they kind of just give you stuff that that works you know what i mean uh but they don't try to be bleeding edge and i think that's what part of the difference is here i think you're going to find though in the future i wouldn't even be surprised if we see some firmware updates for the z uh for the z6 and seven that improve that that actual tracking mode not just tracking general but the tracking mode itself and something else to consider is a lot of people are or no sorry something else to consider is that the a lot of people who are like worried about the af system in those cameras the mark ii cameras are pretty good uh my wife and i go out and sometimes she's shooting a nikon sometimes i am but honestly they're doing a pretty good job for like general wildlife photography it's much better and one of the things that's really great is the accuracy it's like it may not focus as fast or uh as aggressively as a d850 or a d5 or something but man when you when you're on it and that camera has focus it's it you know you're gonna have a sharp photo so you know it's uh i i think they that and i and you know the original cameras kind of made people beat them up a little bit but they are better i wouldn't be too afraid of them it's just that tracking mode itself that really needs some improvement in my opinion uh another person asking any thoughts on the nikon 800 millimeter i think about the 800 millimeter about once a week to be honest with you but i never pull the trigger i think my problem is that there's so many times that 600 millimeter seems to be kind of a sweet spot for me and if i do need more focal length i can add a teleconverter and for the most part on the nikon and sony lenses especially sony that thing is not really taking up too much sharpness when i put it on there it's not eating away at it too bad and i'm real happy with the results i'm getting so i don't know that i want to spend i think what are they 16 000 17 000 i don't know if i want to spend that to get just what would amount to a little bit better result you know what i mean so that's kind of where i am with that i think the 600 for general wildlife photography is more versatile but again really depends on what you're shooting if everything is at an 800 millimeter focal length away then it would make a lot more sense to get that then it would 600 and use a teleconverter and just kind of weld them together so now let's see here haley's asking what my favorite animal is uh it's hard to say uh i'm going with lions right now i really like lions but it varies going with lions though uh let's see here oh someone's asking what computer and software do i use i use macs around i have an imac there it is over there and i'm using my macbook pro right now i'm in my makeshift office upstairs um because i wasn't able to get downstairs when i first came home and now i just haven't moved but uh yeah i use an imac and for software i use all adobe stuff i'm real happy with that i do use the topaz programs too kind of in conjunction with that but my primary stuff is lightroom and photoshop let's see here 72 sorry 70 to 200 with a 2x adapter or any cons um i have seen this tried a lot because it seems like a really good way to get to 400 millimeter and i can't say i can't speak to every 200 millimeter uh or every 70 to 200 at 200 millimeter with that teleconverter but for the most part every time i've seen that tried the results have been disappointing they have not been up to what people expected or had hoped for but i do i have obviously not tested every 70 to 200 on the market never teleconverter on the market so i don't know i have a strong feeling the s line the z stuff for nikon is probably pretty good but i i wish i could tell you but you know i think it's an iffy proposition it might be something to think about renting whenever i have a question about a lenser uh even a teleconverter a camera or something i always run it first so uh it was asking xqd or cf express i would say say uh see if expressive your camera supports it it's a little more future proof although i think xqd is coming down in price so you gotta kind of balance those but i want cards that i can use in the future too so that's where we go that's what i've been doing i've been buying cf express uh let's see where would i like to travel that i have not been to before i think uh the galapagos islands are on my hit list we're supposed to go up into uh canada if things work out as far as i go as i yeah we're that's sometime i think in june but we're supposed to go up to canada and uh like british columbia i've never been there so i'm looking forward to that but i think galapagos islands are pretty high on that list uh we're talking about antarctica one of these days too so those are a couple places i think it'd be a lot of fun uh let's see here what update would you like to see to the d6 david's asking honestly as bad as this sounds and there's nothing wrong with the d6 i love that camera it's a lot of fun to shoot it's maybe one of my favorite cameras to shoot but i'm gonna tell you i'm pretty much transitioning to mirrorless i was shooting dslrs i'm shooting them both side by side but anymore anytime i go out i'm grabbing a mirrorless camera uh so yeah i honestly i think i i don't have any improvements i'd like to see to the d6 other than to make it mirrorless like a z9 let's see here oh man we were talking about this on the forum if you get by the way if you guys aren't on the bcg forums you should go over there there's uh we have a great group of people they're just the friendliest group there's you know everyone gets along really well it's unreal for a forum it's really great so if you really want a nice forum experience where you can safely ask a question without being berated give it a try i think you'd really like it but uh we were talking about baiting wildlife we had actually five pages or so i think that went on when no one got in a fight so there's you know kind of shows the quality of people there but uh my thoughts on baiting wildlife is it depends and i know that sounds i know people are gasping right now he beats wildlife but you know what is your definition of baiting wildlife are we talking about birds at a feeder you know i don't have any problem with that you know hummingbird feeder no there's no issue there as far as i know i think it depends on how you're baiting um hold on for a second i'm getting a little air there okay we're going again i keep getting a little error message saying the connection is unstable but uh yeah i think it depends on what you're doing as far as the baiting goes what kind of animal it is and what it is for the most part any kind of baiting that i do is limited to hanging out at a bird feeder but uh you know other people have different there's different levels of stuff i personally am not going to bait animals to get them to come in other than like i say songbirds i don't really have a problem there but you know i'm not going to go out and you know bait bears or anything like that let's sit here any issues with the ftz on the z62 now you have to update the firmware but otherwise they work all right the only thing with the ftz adapters i've found is that they do focus a little bit slower from minimum focus distance all the way out to infinity than they do on the you know f-mount cameras but usually it's about half speed but if your focus is closer it's not as much of a problem but for the most part yeah there's not really any problems there let's see oh sorry excuse me uh forum address someone's asking about the form address it is bcgforums.com bcgforums.com and if you go to my main backcountry gallery website there's a little link at the top there that'll uh you can click to get to the forums there is it risky to update my nikon d500 so i can use cf express not at all just uh look up nikon firmware update plus steve perry i have a whole video that'll tell you how to do that not a big problem at all let's see here do i have any interest in the sony a1 and how do i like the sony compared to nikon i think a lot of people are wondering about that i actually do have a sony a1 i was using it i've actually been able to get out twice this week to shoot and both times was with the a1 and i have to tell you i am really impressed with that camera so far it is uh everything that uh the marketing said it was it i've been using it for flying birds we were mostly doing seagulls nothing very exciting here in northwest ohio but uh we were out there and just having a blast and you know it does a pretty good job with the bird eye af you know it's not perfect i do have a few you know out of focus shots but you know it's amazing how well it actually does work and uh the camera speed the lack of like that viewfinder's so fast the camera's so fast it is almost like using an optical viewfinder it is so good uh if you have been hesitant to use mirrorless because of like viewfinder issues and things like that it's just this camera would blow you away it looks really good but everything about it is really fast i have been using it more like at 15 frames a second i don't use the 30 frames a second i don't need 30 frames per second of a seagull but it's nice to have all those options there and the autofocus is just spectacular it handles really well i've been really happy with it so far but i've shot less than 2 000 photos with it so ask me again in the next lap session and maybe i'll have a few more uh points to to make but overall for sony versus nikon it's it's really hard to say which one is you know better i i can go out and get picture good pictures with either one it doesn't really matter that much to me if i if i'm doing birds in flight and i have my z z seven two i'm not gonna probably get the same keeper rate as i am with the sony the sony's simply a more capable camera it does more you know frames per second it's got better autofocus all that kind of stuff but i'm not gonna not get good a few good shots with the z7 2 either so um but as far as just overall sony's doing a pretty good job for wildlife right now the 200 to 600 of fantastic lens 100 400 really good one of my favorite lenses the 600 millimeter sony is definitely this my favorite 600 i've never used a 600 i like better and i've used a few of them uh the sharpness i believe i'm gonna maybe do a test i'm kind of afraid to put it on youtube because i'm afraid people it's gonna get turned into a fanboy fury you know fight type of thing but i'm very curious because i kind of feel like the 600 sony the seat of my pants estimate is a little bit sharper than nikon 600 millimeter and i'm pretty sure it takes teleconverters better that teleconverter on that sony 600 is almost invisible but it's lighter it's better balanced it's just it's a really great lens so sony is doing really good but again i wouldn't discount nikon on this one either because right now nikon is just behind they're also talking about releasing a new 600 millimeter for the z line and you may be a couple that with a z you know a z9 and suddenly you're you know neck and neck again so uh but yeah overall i'm not afraid to shoot sony the nice thing with sony right now is that we have the lenses we have the stuff so you know that one of the things that i find with nikon that's a little frustrating is it's always about either what's coming next or when can i get something that's been released you know that's always that that that struggle people are still looking for 500 pfs for crying out loud you know there's always that struggle and that's one thing that's a little bit frustrating with nikon it's like if you look in the forums everyone's talking about you know i can't wait until i get this with nikon with sony it's like oh yeah i want this and i have it for the most part so you know you got to can kind of consider that too uh let's see here thoughts on a d500 and mirrorless form oh i'd like to see that a lot i think that would be a super smart move but i don't know the d500 sales my understanding is that the d500 sales were not like as spectacular as nikon thought they were going to be but i don't know i don't have any inside information i'm telling you things i've read on the internet but you know i think it would be a good move i would love i would love to see something like that i think that'd be great uh do i think there's gonna be a price break on the nikon like d500 d600 future probably i think as the mirrorless cameras come out they're gonna drop i i they like to do that around the holidays let's see have i stopped buying f mount lenses yes i have stopped buying f mount lenses i'm not gonna buy another f mount lens uh i will only buy the z stuff or the sony stuff that's all i'm buying right now matter of fact i've gotten rid of quite a few of my f mount lenses my 200 to 500 even my 180 to 400 i just wasn't using it very much uh the 600 and the 500 pf and the 300 pf i have all those but even my 2470 i got rid of because i have an s line 2470 and that thing is spectacular by the way if you're if you're a z shooter and you want just like the best 2470 you've ever seen in your life get this get the z1 that's the thing i was blown away love that lens the 14 to 30 is actually really good too i think the 2 8 the 14 24 28 is probably better but i'm using the 14 to 30 it's a little more travel friendly but man that thing is great too yeah the lenses with the z line are just outstanding but uh anyway uh let's see and someone says they have a d850 and they were wondering oops my comments are jumping around i apologize guys uh but i'm gonna move down here someone said they have a d850 and they're wondering what the i don't know where the question went i'm sorry uh they're wondering what the mirrorless equivalent is probably closest thing is a z72 it's not really up to the d850 as far as autofocus goes for like action and stuff but otherwise it's comparable it's not quite there i think the z72 and the z62 are more like a d750 d780 level camera in my opinion but i mean as far as as close as you can get that's that's probably it right now maybe if you go to sony you know the a7r iv let's see here uh someone's asking the tamron 150 to 600 g2 lens for wildlife along with the d7200 i have seen that combo in action and it does work people are very happy with the results i've never used those that particular lens so i can't tell you for sure from first-hand experience but i can't tell you on my workshops people seem pretty happy with it in the images i've seen most of them are okay uh i don't know that the 70 that that 150 to 600 is going to rival like a prime or anything like that like a 500 pf most of the time with nikon i do recommend the 200 to 500 though i think they are a little bit sharper than the 150 to 600s but of the world but uh just some food for thought there that one 200 500 is a pretty good lens let's see i don't know the answer to that one if i don't know the answer i have to skip it sorry guys uh someone's asking how's the bird i focus on the a1 it's okay um i'm still kind of evaluating it it depends on the bird seagulls it seems to pick those up pretty well but that's basically all i've had i tried a redwing blackbird but didn't see the eye at all but it did see it does see it on herons and egrets and even uh canada goose i mean and that's kind of a hard idea to crack there but it does see it uh so yeah it does work it does work i am borderline on what on how much i'm going to depend on that particular feature one feature on the a1 that i really like is the sorry uh animal iaf i was using it with deer and it's just it's so freeing because you just put it like on wider zone or whatever you happen to use but you put on wide it finds the eye and you can make your composition any way you like and you don't even have to think about moving that af point around like you normally do it so it's very freeing to have i iaf that works but as far as birds go especially the flying birds it's not quite as um what i want to say it's it's reliable but it's not super reliable you know what i mean it's it'll find it sometimes it depends on it really depends on the bird like for seagulls i use it but if i was doing red wing blackbirds in flight i would not use it i wouldn't work i wouldn't rely on it i would definitely try to rely on you know keeping an af area exactly where i wanted it on the bird let's see here let's see here that's a i like that one sorry you jumped to the end here if you if you had a question i didn't answer make sure you pop it back in there that my comments are jumping around my feet my my internet connection has been a little bit flaky as of late but this is great not a gear question uh how do i personally keep challenging myself in photography as i get more advanced um that is a great question i'm always looking for a way to get a better shot whenever i have a shot of something no matter what it is i'm always like what can i do next so if i have a great job of an elephant i'm asking myself what would be a way to get an even better shot what could i do you know creatively as far as you know should i you know get lower so i get higher should i you know use a wider lens there's so many options out there and i'm always trying to find a way to leverage the technology of my cameras to achieve new and exciting photos that i hadn't been able to do before and try to come up with ideas that i haven't been able to do before like for example one of the things i've tried and failed so far so far is uh i had an idea to get a shot of a prairie dog with a like a 14 millimeter lens right outside this pearl so i had like a remote set up and i was trying to do stuff like that and although it was a failure it's still that's that's the kind of stuff i like to do is come up with ideas to kind of push myself and so i'm not just you know taking the same old deer shot or the same old you know photograph you know you know and i get on little kicks and little themes like you know animals peeking through things you could if you look through my galleries on my website you'll see that's kind of a common theme so i'm always looking for you know those kind of shots i'm always looking for something unique something uh that is not your typical wildlife shot and it is a challenge it is a challenge because you're always you have to always think creatively every time you see an opportunity it's like what can i do here that's different than what i've done before what everyone else has done before for that matter and you know it it is difficult and you sometimes have to sit back and kind of think it through and there's a lot of times i will be going to a location and i'm thinking about what could i do different here what can i do to get the most dramatic shot of whatever animal that i happen to be after you know when we were uh we were shooting some with the z cameras we were up in one of the local metro parks here it's about an hour away and one of the things that i've been experimenting with is how to get better shots of some of these little small birds chickadees and nut hatches and things like that and you know one you know and so i was like well you know in the place that we go uh it's uh the metro park we go they're so tame you can actually put feet in your hand and you can and they'll come and they'll land on your hand well unfortunately you can't take pictures while that's happening so that's you know it's like okay well we have you know an audience here that's going to be relatively you know relatively easy if you've ever photographed little birds you know they're never easy but they're going to be relatively easy to photograph so what i've done with those little birds is i created a little feeder system that i can string from a tree and then they can come down to the feeder and i can just position it near perches and stuff so you know you were we were talking about baiting earlier i say little songbirds no problem with that especially the ones that are habituated to it so but you know it's things like that where you're trying to challenge yourself and as i'm driving up there i'm like well how could i do this maybe i i want a nut hatch this time hanging upside down from a branch instead of just sitting on the side of a tree you know you want to go beyond those field guide shots you got to ask yourself what would that look like and i think that's i think that's kind of the key uh yeah shooting seagulls is is good for getting ready to shoot aspects for sure uh what are the drinks oh someone was asking about the drinks i did not talk about it i have iced tea today so i have to take it easy today let's see here thoughts on photography i'm bouncing photography and family life uh unfortunately my kids are both grown and one's in college and my wife and i both shoot the best way to balance it is to get your spouse to go out with a camera with you get them interested in it and then all of a sudden every you know they want to go all the time and it's a lot of fun let's see here what percentage of the time do you spot metering for birds in flight that's a good question uh never is probably the answer i don't really spot meter on them as they're flying i will use spot metering though if i want to go to manual mode and maybe i have some birds flying around i'm like okay i want you know and it's a tricky thing you know the background's dark and the birds are bright you know it's just the kind of thing that would throw off auto exposure if i want to go full manual i go to spot meter and i find something middle tone that's in the same light as a bird i meter off of that and then i and then i lock that in take a couple of test shots and then i'm shooting from there that's what i that's how you spot me and the problem with spot metering actively on a flying bird is that you can get some discrepancy there with your metering because if that spot meter is slightly off the bird and it sees the background it's going to underexpose the bird yeah well or if it's a dark background it'll over expose bird depends what it's looking at you know if the if you can keep the spot meter on the bird and the bird's middle tone you're golden but otherwise you know it's too it's too variable for me you see exposures all over the place i see people try to do that in our workshops and they're like why are my exposures all over it's like well were you spot metering oh yeah it was well there you go one of the biggest misconceptions with a spot meter is that all you have to do is put the spot meter on your subject you'll have a perfect exposure but the truth is what it's going to do is when you put that spot meter on your subject is you're going to have a middle tone exposure for whatever that's on so if it's a white bird it's going to be gray if it's a black bird it's going to be gray so it's going to overexpose black and under exposed white so you have to be really careful that's why i use it as an aid to manual exposure i think it works really great for that uh let's see here oh that's a good question melvin's asking uh do i like photographing rare species um or over common species or both i i i like them all i i'll shoot everything uh rare species an okay image of a rare species is okay with me too uh i would rather have a dramatic speech inside of a rare species but if it's something really hard i'll take you know your typical field guide shot sometimes but that's my beginning shot that's what we were talking about a little bit ago that's where i start and then next time i see it i want to do something better but if i see if i'm out there and i see a servo cat or something i do have a picture of one of those i have a very generic picture of a circle cat from one of my africa shots uh photograph photo tours and i've never posted it i've never been real super proud of it but i do have the shot and now i'm looking for you know the next level of shots but yeah um now as far as a common animal with a great image if between those two i think i kind of i'm answering that question i'll uh i just tell you i didn't ever post the serval shot but yeah i think most of the time i would rather have a great shot like something spectacular of a more common species than just a mediocre shot of a rare species i will take the rare species i'll take that shot but like i say whether or not i post or not because i'm always thinking in my head i'm going to see that rare species again someday and i'm going to get a better shot so that's what's in that's what's going on up here so a lot of times i don't want to post something that's i don't feel is as good as it could be you know what i mean so hopefully that answers the question but yeah i think just to expand on that just a little bit so many times i think people kind of disregard very common species but you can get really dramatic very exciting images of just very common species that are you know maybe you know deer and geese and you know stuff like that seagulls for that matter i got some really cool shots of some of those seagulls the other day and you know if you take a normal average shot of a common species it's not going to go anywhere but if you take a really dramatic shot of it you know people are going to notice it if you post it in that and i think that's worthwhile and i think you know that's one of the challenges with photography is going out and being able to get a shot of that caliber of something that's very common i think if i think it's that mark of a good photographer somebody who can go out and make any species look good uh let's see here a couple more here my voice is starting to crack a little bit uh which let's see which body do you recommend for the 600 f4 d850 or d5 it depends what your needs are um i use it on both those cameras i've used it on both of those cameras if i need a little more cropping or if i can get if it's bright enough i i prefer the d850 but probably the majority of my stuff was shot on a d5 d6 type of camera i like the speed of those cameras i'm always looking for action you know so it's so that's something to consider too but uh the d850 uh when i was in africa and i have pla last time i was there in 2019 i used my d850 almost exclusively and uh just because i had the light for it and i wanted the extra resolution i mean i'm filling the frame and that but yeah if i want to make a big huge poster of this thing i want to be able to do that so i definitely i think the d850 just for the record i think the d850 is probably the best dslr ever made so it's hard to you know as far as for general shooting uh let's see here let's see that's a good question uh moving from jpeg to raw what to consider that's a good question the thing is there's a lot of steps involved that's a that's a big hurdle and probably more than we can cover here in just a few minutes but there are things that you're gonna have to think about when you're going from jpeg to raw you're gonna need something to the biggest thing is you're gonna need something to process those raw files so you're gonna need something like lightroom or on one or capture one or yeah whichever your but it's not really as hard as you might think it is so many times i hear people like i don't wanna have to process it but you know for the most part we don't need every single shot that we take if you go out and shoot a thousand images of some you know flying birds or something one morning you're not gonna use a thousand of them you're probably gonna pick your favorite two or three of them and then you process those but for the most part you know you go into lightroom and there's you know the develop modules just sliders like do you want a brighter or darker do you want to shift the color this way or that way there's a lot of options there so my record you know i i would definitely give it a try but that's probably the biggest hurdle when people are going from jpeg to raw is that whole thing where they have to post process it but also keep in mind most raw processors have built-in profiles so you can make it look like the camera jpeg would look like anyway so if you like that you're done but you had the option if you wanted to make some of those changes too so yeah i that that that's the yeah that's probably the biggest hurdle but that in and of itself would probably be a really good video or article i'll have to think about doing that i think that's a good question let's see here oh someone's asking this is a good question i get this one real quick uh when using spot metering in manual mode would it require auto iso to be turned on no you turn it off turn it off if you're using a manual yeah i don't know stephen he's asking if niko's ever going to make a macro lens close to the sharpness of the 200 f4d i hope so i hope so i think i have that lens too and i never use it but i refuse to get rid of it i love it like you say the sharpness is just mind-blowing let's see here thank you for the well wishes everyone too oh let's see that's a good question too there's so many good questions here guys i do apologize uh i'm getting about i'm gonna probably log off in about five minutes or so my voice is starting to go but uh uh there's one here uh let's see how can i train myself to be patient with shots and get more selective when shooting rather than just grabbing the shots that takes some discipline it really does you that that is probably the number one problem i see with especially newer wildlife photographers but just wildlife photographers in general every time i'm on my workshop if there's something cool the first thing that happens people walk straight towards whatever it is that is out there that is cool you know whatever animal it is you know toucan or whatever and they're like oh i'm gonna get pictures of that they don't look at backgrounds they don't look at foregrounds they don't look at the stick that's dividing the bird in half they just start shooting and the biggest thing you can learn is to just kind of stay calm when you see an animal i kind of think of it like a jet fighter pilot you know those guys have to be cool under pressure and if you ever watch any movies you know they're all always calm and things are happening all around them and they're just you know level-headed the whole time and you have to kind of bring that to your photography and just kind of think yourself as a jet fighter pilot i guess maybe and you know stay very calm and just go up to that sub you know and look at things as you're whenever i'm approaching a subject i'm watching the background the foreground how everything interacts and where if there's any distracting sticks or anything like that and i'm maneuvering myself so that when i do want to shoot i'm in the best possible position i have the best background i don't have any distractions cutting the bird in half or whatever so or the animal in half or whatever so those are the kind of things but the biggest thing is just kind of keeping your cool and just you know relaxing and accepting the idea that even if you don't get the shot you know it's still a good experience i think that's some of it too i'm willing to lose a shot i'm not you know i'm not going to go crazy i want to get the shots don't get me wrong but i want to get good shots so it's me getting a grab shot and then ruining the opportunity because sometimes you do you run up and you're like oh i'm going to grab this really quick and the bird flies away or the animal runs off where as you could have still gotten the shot if you would have been in a better position so it's always worth getting in that better position in the long run so let's see i think that's going to wrap us up guys it has been about 45 minutes my voice is starting to crack i'll leave i'm going to have this in the archives here so you can watch it again if for some reason you want to i really do appreciate everybody uh showing up for the live stream today and again uh thank you for everybody uh thank you to everybody who helped kind of support me through this covert problem and uh i hope to continue to improve and hopefully in a month or two i will be back to 100 but at least right now i'm functional enough to do stuff so thank you everybody once again and uh have a great day

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 15,005

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography

Id: YNkNHuC2ng8

Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021