Wildlife Photography_ From Snapshots to Great Shots - Laurie Excell [11]
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• Graduated ND. When the exposure range is greater than your camera can capture in one click, a graduated ND filter works to compact the exposure between the foreground and sky. I use a Lee graduated ND 3-stop soft filter and hold it in front of the lens by hand. A fairly straight line between the bright and dark areas is necessary to make a natural transition. This filter is useful for landscapes as well as environmental wildlife photography.
• Canon 500D Close-up lens. When macro is not the primary focus of a shoot, I may leave my macro lens at home, but I always carry a Canon 77mm 500D Close-up lens that threads onto the front of both my 24–120mm VR and 70–200mm 2.8 VR. The 500D is a two-element, close-up filter that has fairly low distortion and enables me to focus closer than my lenses’ minimum focus distance, allowing me to capture close-ups in nature. The 500D comes in a variety of sizes and strengths to accommodate most lenses regardless of the brand you shoot.
Protective Coverings
One of the first items you should invest in if you buy a new long lens is a LensCoat protective neoprene cover (Figure 1.21). LensCoat covers will help protect your investment against bumps, bangs, dings, and to some degree weather. If you take good care of your equipment, it will continue to work hard for you.
Figure 1.21 The LensCoat long-lens cover protects lenses from getting banged up in the field, keeping them working and looking good.
Camera Cleaning Kit
It’s important to keep your sensor clean and free of particles. At best, it can take extra time to clean up images in the digital darkroom, and at worst, you will end up with a spot on a hard-to-remove area. Every night after a day’s shoot, I clean my camera and check the sensor to ensure that it is free of any debris that might appear on my images. If you are in the field and are changing lenses, you will get dust on your sensor; so, having a cleaning kit along is essential. I use the Visible Dust products for their innovative designs, quality, and the fact that their liquids are not flammable. As a result, the TSA will not confiscate them and leave me a nastygram in my suitcase and no cleaning fluid on location.
The items included in my cleaning kit (Figure 1.22) consist of:
• A man’s shaving brush to remove surface debris and dust from the outer part of my camera and lenses
• Visible Dust Sensor Loupe to get a magnified view of the sensor while checking for dust
• Zeeion Blower to “blow” dust off the sensor as needed
• Arctic Butterfly with light to “brush” dust that the blower didn’t remove from the sensor
• Visible Dust Sensor Swabs and Sensor Clean fluid to remove those pesky specks that won’t blow or brush off
• Q-tips, lens-cleaning solution, a microfiber cloth, and an Absorber (car chamois)
• I use the Q-tips with a little bit of lens-cleaning fluid to clean tight places and the contacts of my camera and lens, and the Absorber to remove surface grime from my camera and lenses.
Figure 1.22 I always carry my cleaning kit with me on my travels to keep my camera and sensor in tip-top, clean condition.
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Tip
Yours truly has a step-by-step tutorial on sensor cleaning and camera maintenance at Kelby Training. Check it out at www.kelbytraining.com.
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Flashlight/Headlamp
As a wildlife or nature photographer, you’ll usually be in the field well before first light and be the last to leave after the sun has set, assuming you are not staying out for night photography as well. Therefore, to light the way to your destination as well as to check your camera settings in the dark, be sure to use a flashlight or a headlamp in the field (Figure 1.23). A headlamp frees up your hands to work the camera while illuminating the buttons and dials.
Figure 1.23 A Streamlight flashlight