How do the professional wild life photographers take such sharp photos that look almost borderline fake?
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Topaz.
dont forget they often shoot at very high iso so this software is essential for wildlife
Topaz hasn’t been around for long, photographers were taking sharp pictures before it existed. Topaz/dxo only help slightly increasing the amount of keepers.
wildlife photos incredibly sharp how
Incredibly expensive equipment.
I can recommend Simon d’Entremont on Youtube, if you want to go into wildlife photography. And Duade Paton. And others I just forgot.
Expensive lenses, lots of practice and opportunities, good post editing skills.
In short, lots of practice. We work at it. We might not always end up with magazine quality images but it’s what some of us strive for. I’ve only been at this for like eight years now. Still learning bucket loads. I’m pleased if some of my captures are clean shots in good light, and that I can get a reasonable composition out of something that initially wasn’t at first blush, usable. Best of all, I still enjoy going out into the urban wilderness to make photos of birds and critters. ~Excelsior!~
“we” 😅
It’s the glass. Their expensive primes are insane. Our classic mainstream affordable zooms can’t compare.
Great camera, expensive lens, years of practice, fantastic technique … and then take 1000 pictures and only show people the 3-4 sharpest ones they took
Using the same techniques to get sharp photos in any situation (shitter speed appropriate to your subject/to get the desired end result, knowing how to gauge aperture well enough to get the entirety of your subject sharp but also still isolated from the background), a long lens, a tripod with the ball loose enough to pan freely, and shooting on continuous high.
Then of course, being very patient and taking lots of shots when an opportunity does arise. Wildlife photography is more akin to sports photography than any other type of photography, only way more unpredictable. You arent going to go out and just snap one shot and get exactly what you hoped to out of it like you could a portrait, architecture, landscape, etc. And even with sport photography, you know where the action is headed/going to be. Wild animal… pshhh… who knows what they are going to do lol.
Honestly, like 80% of the time wildlife photography guves me anxiety lol. Wondering if youve taken enough shoots to get the one you will love, worrying about missing out on an opportunity while its right in front of you, all while trying to focus and be patient enough to wait for the shot to be right… but never really knowing until it happens.
Then other things happen… like the animal just runs off unexpectedly and that moment you waited hours for is gone. Or you check a couple shots on the LCD screen real quick to see if youve got something that you like… just to get home and look at it in LR and realize the shot you thought was a banger if fricken out of focus. Or just the monotony of looking through 100s or 1000s of pictures of the same animal hoping to find one that you really nailed… but you dont lol.
I’ve had trips where I spent days traveling and days at a location… only to never get to encounter the animal i was hoping to photograph.
Wildlife photography is my bread and butter. Its very exciting to nail the shot you envisioned, but can very easily be a lot of miss opportunity… even when you are prepared.
It’s all about the setup and glass. Being as close as you can be while maintaining ethics. Then, taking thousands of photos until you get that 1 perfect (in your opinion) photo. Wildlife photographers spend weeks/months/years photographing specific species. When you think of a week vacation, they are spending 7 days sitting in a snowy field eating beef jerky and granola bars waiting for an elusive snow leopard, and hiring sherpas to help pack in base camp.
Good glass, fast speeds, predictability of situations, sometimes a tinge of flash, stabilized lenses and above all, a lot of experience.
That’s pretty much it.
A really good lens will give you sharper results than a cheap one, but it can be hard to tell the difference between a really good lens and just a decent one unless you’re pixel peeping. Some more important factors to create sharp wildlife photos:
- Get the eyes in focus. Sharp eyes lead to a sharp looking photo
- Be selective. If a shot is not sharp, consider it a missed shot. Don’t edit and share it
- Composition. A poorly composed shot might be perfectly sharp, but have lower perceived sharpness. Poor contrast, busy frame, etc can make a shot feel less shop
- Get close. If your subject is tiny in the frame, perceived sharpness is lower. If you do a ton of cropping, you lose sharpness. Get close enough to fill the frame with your subject and capture detail
- Manage noise. Noise reduces detail. Pay attention to lighting so you can keep ISO down. If you do have to push ISO, use some of the amazing noise reduction software that’s available to clean up your image
- Limit sharpening. Over sharpening images in post can make images look bad. If you’re not starting off with a sharp image, sharpening in post won’t fix that
- Post processing. Edit photos to improve contrast in key areas, bring out details that may be lost in shadow or bright areas, draw attention to the correct areas (eyes for example). These things help perceived sharpness
Tagging on to your comment because you’ve covered most of it here.
In addition to getting close to your subject, if you can find an angle to shoot that maximizes the distance of the subject to their background, that can increase subject separation which also helps perceived sharpness.
Jan WegenerJan Wegener has a great video on sharpness that talks about some lesser-considered factors in perceived sharpness.
Good lenses definitely make a difference but I’ve found shutter speed is one of the most important factors. Even for something stationary I tend to try to aim for a minimum of 1/1000s as even a gentle breeze and motion from the subject breathing will cause micro movements in feathers and fur that can make the image look soft at lower shutter speeds.
This was shot at 1/1250 to stop those micro movements.
£5k+ cameras and £15k+ lenses certainly help too lol
If you’ve never used a supertelephoto prime then you’ll have a hard time believing just how good they are. The optical designs are incredibly sharp, offer fantastic contrast and colour reproduction, as well as having almost zero distortion.
And no, their photos don’t look borderline fake.
Yeah, where does OP’s “borderline fake” jab come From?
That’s the, “if I can’t do it, nobody can!” fallacy. Must be cheating somehow.
My guess is that OP means the photos are so good, that they have to be staged or in captivity or something like that. In the right context, I would take it as a compliment. Like your photo is so good, it’s unbelievable that it could come straight from a camera.
Mostly it’s a mix between fast shutter speed, good AF, and taking a lot of photos. But before that you have to understand and learn how to work your AF, your camera … So first of all it’s a lot of practice too.
