Thread: Taking photos

Fab photos.... even those of us that take pictures regularly get the white and red eyes with the flash... if you camera has an AV and or a pets and children setting this might be the best if your stunning Walter is on the move... you can also on the AV setting make the shots continuous.. I like this setting best you get some fab action shots....

When I have babies I can take up to 400 shots... and only about 20 of theme are good enough for the website...

Your photos are great.... and he is beautiful xx

Photos 4 and 5 are really good - they show off his beautiful coat, his lovely clear eyes, that gorgeous muzzle... think you're better at this than you give yourself credit for! I can generally get good shots of Freyja (although when I use a flash, it makes her eyes like a little insane) but Wicca is an absolute mare... shots with the flash make her eyes look - to put it bluntly - "evil" and her coat is so shiny that it can be difficult to see her features; with no flash, her eyes are great, and her coat doesn't overpower her features, but you still can't see them as she's so black!

What a handsome lad, I love pics 3 and 5. I always take heaps of shots and end up deleting most of them just to get a good one. Monty is the worst to photograph, he always seems to end up having 'evil eyes' if I use the flash, but then if I use the flash, a lot of the time he then closes them!!!

Walter's a looker for sure.

I've been trying to get the hang of snapping the kitties and I found a couple of things.

I'm not any sort of photography expert, but I'll share my limited experience.

Generally, flash doesn't work all that well for cats. It annoys/scares the cats and gives the evil eye effect...

I have what was an entry level DSLR at the time Nikon D40.

One of the better investments I made for it as far as indoor photography was a fast prime lens.

This allows low light shots to be crisp and clear while minimizing the motion blur.

Here's a couple I took in low light without flash.



This one was with the room lights on, no flash or camera lighting,



Coco watching the sunrise with no other lighting.



Elvis in really dim light.

A UV filter helps too with some types of lighting.

The other necessity is a bit of post processing to even out minor lighting adjustments, crop, rotate, size, etc.

I use iPhoto that comes with Apple iLife and a shareware program called Graphic Converter...

There's equivalent programs for Windows. One doesn't need to spend hundreds for Photoshop...

It's also not necessary to spend tons of money on camera gear, either, but it can be necessary to experiment and see what the equipment on hand is capable of.

There's many sites dedicated to teaching the basics of photography...

Also, bits are cheap. One can snap hundreds of shots and throw all of them away except for the outstanding ones...

Good advice Claudel... I used to have a Nikon D70, excellent camra but it eventually gave up the ghost (we did event photography once-upon-a-time) so I got a point and shoot Olympus (tiny silver thing) it isn't very good at all far too much shutter delay etc... it rally is worth paying that bit more for a DSLR, look on ebay for some used bargains...

Beautiful photos....Claudel xx

I use DSLRs that give much more control over photo parameters and have much better quality lenses. As already noted, trying photos without flash has many advantages, but either the cat must be still or the light level high or you need a really expensive "fast lens." One of the great things about digital cameras for photographing pets is that you can take a hundred photos in a few minutes and just discard all but the good ten or so.

The glowing eyes from flash apparently has a name, eyeshine, and can be read about here:
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It is possible to use photo adjustment software to clean it up when it isn't too bad. Unfortunately, automated red-eye tools won't work, so you will have to read about how to do it manually. I have gotten pretty good at fixing this, but it can take 5-10 minutes per photo.

I will include one of the first photos I fixed. Would have been a shame to lose this to eyeshine:

Originally Posted by elismom

I struggle with eyeshine as well with Eli and red-eye with my blue-eyed kitten! On top of this unless the light is very bright and thereby I don't need the flash, Eli just looks like a shadow with eyeshine!
Thanks for the helpful tip about fixing eyeshine. You're right, it would have been sad to lose the picture above. Fantastic looking cats you have!

Photographing black cats is definitely the hardest. Pretty much have to use flash and have a lens that allows you to get close ups or you don't see much. I have tried with the neighbor's black cat that lives on our porch.

Here are zoomed crops showing what was done to Allie's eyes in the photos I posted:

I have never had much luck with the red-eye reduction preflash with the cats, as it distracts them. Plus, even if their pupils are open only a bit you can still get eyeshine that wrecks the photo.

Another advantage of a good quality digital camera is the ability to crop photos and still end up with usable size. It is often quite hard to frame a shot optimally when rushing to shoot something cute. So definitely you should not consider a photo final until you have considered reframing it.

Most digital SLRs will also allow you to shoot in "raw mode" which effectively stores the raw sensor data. This provides the very best starting point for manipulating your photos. If you frequently manipulate exposure, etc. in your photos, you should store raw mode versions. The JPEG versions have already been manipulated in the camera, so there is a limit to how much you can change them without getting artifacts. I think most DSLRs will allow you to have the camera store both a JPEG and raw version. That is what I have my Canon set to do. That way, if I need to manipulate exposure or white balance, I am starting with maximum information.