Squirrel
Photography
Processing
With our winters being quite void of colour, light and snow, I decided to come up with a processing method that would help the subjects better stand out against the background. The below example shows a "Before & After" for such an edit. This image was shot at ISO 1600, so was a little noisy (although they can easily be worse). Here are the steps I applied in the workflow:
-
Processed in DxO PureRAW 3
-
Edited exposure & colour (ACR)
-
Mask - everything except subject
-
Darkened & desaturated (mask)
-
Added contrast and vignette
-
Removed distracting dirt & debris
-
Applied colour grade
A reasonably accurate mask will be required to use different settings on the subject, and this can be tricky to make with hair / fur (especially with shallow depth of field). Software can help to automate this process, but nothing is perfect, thus it'll probably be the most fiddly part of the workflow. The dirt and debris clean-up can be quite time-consuming, but I find it a valuable way to keep focus on the subject, rather than getting distracted.
Retro Digital
These next image was taken on my first DSLR (Fujifilm Finepix S2 Pro), back in 2002, mere days after I bought the camera. The Sigma zoom lens I used (17-35mm f/2.8-4) generally had very poor image quality, but it was surprisingly decent for close-ups on its widest angle/aperture. Its 17mm f/2.8 setting is equivalent to a 25.5mm f/4.2 image on full frame. With no live view and certainly no flip-up screen, focusing and framing had to be done by looking through the optical viewfinder, thus I had to get down in the wet grass.
New Tech
Contrast the above shot with the next one. After picking up the Sony 24GM lens recently, I decided to try shooting some wide angle squirrel images once again. Twenty years of technology improvements have revolutionized the photographic experience for subjects like this. Sure; the resolution, dynamic range, burst speed & sensor size have all been hugely improved, but the truly game-changing elements are the fast & reliable animal eye tracking that works across the entire frame, while using live-view on a flip up rear screen. It's this that enable me to get images I'd otherwise not be able to. The lens is also three stops faster, whilst being lighter and significantly sharper too. Going back to old cameras is a great way to keep these things in perspective.
Infrared
Since I have an infrared camera, it seemed rude not to at least try photographing squirrels in that wavelength. There is unfortunately not a huge difference to their fur luminosity in infrared light, but their eyes are quite different. It's usually difficult to see the pupil in squirrel's eyes because they look all black in most lighting. When they do show up in infrared, they are considerably more clear.
Thermal
When I got my hands on a basic thermal camera for my phone, I tried it out on squirrels and immediately found something interesting. This squirrel had a damaged paw and the video shows that with high levels of heat.
Vintage Cameras
Going back to using digital SLRs for shooting squirrels demonstrated that they can have pretty colour separation when dealing with heavy green colour casts on red fur. See my dedicated page here.
Apex
Despite the above CCD topic, the Sony A1 combined with the Sony 135GM lens is a formidable combination for photographing almost anything. It doesn't do anything magical processing wise, like a smartphone, if you screw up you'll get bad photos, but if you know what you want, and you need performance to get there, it delivers. Sure, it's about ten times the cost of the previous combination (or 100 times just the camera), but it is pretty amazing!
Lightweight & Budget
As cheap and geeky as it can be to use older DSLRs for up close squirrel photography, it's certainly not an easy or pleasant experience. My mission here was to find a cheap and light system that was also powerful and highly capable. Up until very recently, this combination of features would have been hard to find. Now, for less than €800 (second hand, otherwise less than €1000) and 800g, you can get a camera and lens combination that takes images like this...
The star here is the Sirui 75mm f/.2 AF APS-C lens, which costs only €356 brand new! That gets you a 113mm f/1.8 full frame equivalent, with a 69cm minimum focus distance. Combining its decent AF speed with the Sony ZV-E10's animal eye-AF, silent shutter and decent burst speed makes it feel like a mini Sony A9, while costing and weighing less than half as much. That's just insane! Although you lose in-body image stabilization, and a viewfinder, I don't really need those for friendly wildlife and Bokeh Panos anyway. You do gain a fully articulated rear screen, though, so low angle portrait images are now easy to line up.