Photographing Animals Indoors

[MavericksMission]

Hi Guys..

I recently purchased a Canon 450d SLR camera, and I am having so much fun learning everything!!

I'm not sure if it is a common problem or not but when your taking photos of animals inside in unnatural lighting does anyone find there eyes have like a blue or yellow glow from the flash?

Is there a specific setting I can put the camera on to stop this?

I find when I put disable the flash it goes a horrible yellow colour and it is hard to stay in focus (goes all blurry..)

Any tips and tricks would be much appreciated!!

Thanks fellow photography loving DOLers

Edited - Spelling and missing words..

Edited May 7, 2010 by MavericksMission

[MavericksMission]

Thanks JS!

I will definitely try covering the flash slightly with something and see how that goes!

Thanks for the tip

[Kirislin]

Hi Guys..

I recently purchased a Canon 450d SLR camera, and I am having so much fun learning everything!!

I'm not sure if it is a common problem or not but when your taking photos of animals inside in unnatural lighting does anyone find there eyes have like a blue or yellow glow from the flash?

Is there a specific setting I can put the camera on to stop this?

I find when I put disable the flash it goes a horrible yellow colour and it is hard to stay in focus (goes all blurry..)

Any tips and tricks would be much appreciated!!

Thanks fellow photography loving DOLers

Edited - Spelling and missing words..

Go back to your manual and look up white balance. You can adjust it so you dont get that awful yellow tinge. If you shoot in RAW you can adjust it even after taking the photo on your Canon program DPP. I suspect the reason you get the blurries when you dont use flash is the shutter speed slows right down to allow more light in and slow shutter speed = blur.

Try increasing your ISO to maybe 800 although I found anything over ISO 400 with my 400D made it too grainy/noisy for my liking, the 450D might be better there, I dont know. Have your aperture as wide as it will go (that means a low number, not high) and try to have your shutter at least 1/125 or more.

Hopefully some of the experts will come in here and give you some advice. I was assuming you're talking about night time but if during the day inside any natural light at all will help. Someone who I think is an expert at utilising that is Bec of Becandcharch. Have a look at some of her indoor pics of her doggies. They're just beautiful IMO

Edited May 7, 2010 by Kirislin

[rubiton]

Try to have the dog NOT looking directly at the lens if using the little flash on the camera (if you are using a big flash in the hot show the eye tends not to happen). If the dog is not looking at the flash/lens its less likely to reflect back (the red/green eyes is the light reflecting from inside the eyeball back to the lens if that makes sense).

[MavericksMission]

Okay.

I will sit here and keep reading that and try and take it all in

I will go have a look at the manual and have a play around

Thanks!

[Linda K]

was also going to say the yellow or blue is due to the white balance - yellow is generally tungsten lights, blue fluorescent. You can counter this by making sure that the WB is either custom set, using a grey car, or shooting in RAW, and convert in software program like Aperture, Lightroom or Bridge/Photoshop. I generally prefer the natural light, as it is kinder, and more natural looking, and does not create harsh shadows and bright washout effect that flash can, nvermind the pet-eye you get. If you do not already have one, a great investment is the 50mm (either 1.4 or 1.8), as this will allow you to go wide open to make maximum benefit from any available light. A good guide too with the lens is to make sure you do not let the shutter speed drop below 1 / the length of the lens eg if you are using a 70-200 lens, keep the shutter speed above 1/250 sec. Windows are a great source of light, try to avoid direct light when shooting, so that this way you have a softer light source lighting the subject. The main key is to look to see if you have catchlights appearing in the eyes, as these stop the eyes looking dead black pools of darkness, and add a nice lively feel to the dog. If they are not appearing the way you have the dog facing, try turning the subject around until they do

[redangel]

using a grey car,....ok am I the only one who is like huh????? can someone explain this to one not so onwavelength????

[redangel]

..oh and with all this advice flying round Ive lashed and and bought a notebook to jot em down.......my storage rememberwise is filled with kid stuff. Thank you all for your advice. Glad your having fun Maverick.

[huga]

I'm allergic to using the flash, so just try to make sure I have the subject near natural light (windows, doors etc).

[~*Shell*~]

My biggest tip for photographing animals indoors is to buy a speedlite!

Not very helpful I know but I wouldn't be without one now!

[Ashanali]

You're talking about colour temperature.

Light has different colour temperatures, just like when you adjust the temperature of your monitor from something like 5500k (kelvin) to 6500k and you can see the difference, different light sources also have different temperatures.

Tungsten light is yellow and warm. You will get this when shooting indoors using light from the older style light bulbs

Flourescent light is actually very close to daylight in terms of temperature but it adds a green colour cast

Flash is close to daylight but somewhat cooler

If you have the white balance on your camera set to AWB (auto white balance) the camera will select what it sees as most correct. Usually it is close, but sometimes you don't want that.

If you put your setting onto cloudy or shady, the camera thinks you are in an area that has 'cool tones' and will warm up the colour temperature.

If you have the cloudy setting on when you shoot in an area with tungsten light, people will look like bright orange oompa loompas.

If you have are shooting indoors and have a really warm light that's over the top, you can select the tungsten setting (it looks like a lightbulb) and it will cool the image down. Be warned though, if you forget and then head out and shoot in daylight, everything will look very blue.

The best tip for shooting indoors (anything, not just dogs) either use natural light or use a proper flash (not the pop up flash) directed to bounce of the wall or ceiling or even off the camera (that's a bit advanced though.)

Alternatively, set your camera to AWB and then make slight corrections to the temperature when you are editing the images.

[Linda K]

Yes I did mean grey card not grey car, damn fat fingers!!!!

when using the grey card (and getting one that has the bits which are black, white and grey on it, not just one that is grey), you can take a picture of that, then go to the CWB (or custom white balance), area on your camera menu, use that image as the one the camera asks you for to use as its white balance indicator, and then away you go - the only trick is to check the histogram first once you have taken the shot of your target to make sure the black peak is on the far left (no clipping), the grey is in the middle, and the white is on the far right (again no clipping on the histogram - if you need to, adjust the exposure dial to compensate and shoot again until the peaks on the histogram are as desired. When you then open up the images in RAW when processing, you can use the grey card one as the starting point to ensure the WB is correct.

For just ordinary shooting though, most cameras will be pretty accurate with auto (or AWB), on them for about 90% of what you are doing, it is moreso for serious work that I pull out my card, if I am just taking "snapshots", for myself and not a client job, I will just use AWB.

[Clicking Mad]

wow, cool thread, and great tips ... can't believe I actually understood the grey card explanations I was expecting it to be harder

sorry, can't add any more useful information but what I do is avoid the whole night-time shooting, if it's a dark day and I'm only left inside, or want to catch something particularly cute with the dogs, I try to use as much window light, lamps, overhead lights as I can and I'm not afraid of bumping up my ISO where necessary ;) ... then I adjust white-balance in edit ... I love the variety white-balance gives a photo (particularly shooting RAW)

[MavericksMission]

Thanks for all the tips guys!!

Knew I could count on my fellow DOLers!

Edited May 11, 2010 by MavericksMission