Ferrety Fotos

[ESP2008]

I hope this is a slightly different angle on the usual questions asked!   

First the background: within the last couple of years, my girlfriend and I have become involved with our local ferret welfare charity here, in the UK.  Naturally, with a number of ferrets passing through our household, I have been taking quite a few photographs.  OK, truth be told, a LOT of photographs! 

The lady who runs the welfare has increasingly being using my pictures in her newsletter which gets printed and emailed to various interested parties.  There have also been publicity flyers and the like featuring my efforts.  She is increasingly interested in using my pictures for posters, flyers and other awareness-raising formats, together with inclusion in a magazine that is planned for 2009 and fund-raising efforts involving purchase of ferret photos.  No pressure, then! 

I currently use a Canon 400D with Canon EF-S 17-85/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (increasingly aided by one of the right-angle viewer gizmos for getting closer to ferret level).  Though the 17-85 is acknowledged as a good lens (it really is a useful general purpose lens), and the IS feature is invaluable, I sometimes find that it seems to lack the speed and sharpness I think I require for crisp ferrety images across a range of lighting conditions from sunlight to flash.

I also possess the 70-200mm f2.8 IS, which is a fantastic lens, but not really suitable for this kind of work.  Bear in mind that ferrets tend to be highly mobile (usually pausing and posing for no more than a couple of seconds before bursting into action once more) and that conditions (both indoors and outdoors) in most cases are less than ideal for a large, heavy lens!

The question: can you recommend a small selection of lenses (Canon or compatibles) that will improve my chances of obtaining pictures of suitable quality, please?  Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks.

[KeithB]

I don't know that any lens will really help here.  You just need to take a bunch of photos to get a few keepers.

However, faster lenses will get you a faster shutter speed.  The 50 mm /1.8 would be a good start and it is pretty cheap.  The 100 mm /2.8 macro is not quite as fast, but it is sharper and will focus closer.

[ESP2008]

Thanks for the tips, although I already do plenty of the first suggestion! 

I have to admit that I have considered the 50mm but have found the 17-85 so versatile, I haven't thought it worthwhile to add another lens.

From what I am beginning to understand, am I correct in thinking that to get the best out of the 17-85mm I should steer clear of the two focal extremes, try for approx f11-f16 and the fastest shutter speed I can get away with in the lighting conditions available, and put the camera on a medium ISO setting and the highest size/quality so that I can crop down to the subject cleanly?  I don't use RAW because I am unsure as to whether I will get much of an advantage from it.

I usually try to shoot in shutter priority mode, with centre-weighted spot metering, in AF-servo mode.  I try to shoot between the eyes.    Does this seem to be sensible combination?

[Bob Atkins]

If you are shooting at f11-f16 then a fast lens isn't going to help. It's not a fast focusing lens either.

I'm not quite sure what your problem is. If it's focus speed, then you need a USM lens, but you already have one. It's possible a lens like the 85/1.8 USM might be faster and of course if you shoot it wide open it will allow a faster shutter speed, but you may have depth of field issues at f1.8.

It's possible that upgrading the camera to a 40D or 50D might improve AF a bit, plus you can shoot at 6 frames/sec and with a highly mobile subject the more you shoot the better the odds of getting one or two frames in good focus.

You probably just need to shoot a lot and throw 95% of the images away. There's probably no technique that will get you a 100% success rate with small, rapidly moving creatures!

You could also try working with flash as your main light source. You'd need multiple flash units and diffusers, but the flash would certainly freeze any subject motion. That may be more than you want to get into though.

[ESP2008]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my naive queries.  To be brutally honest with myself, I think I was looking for an excuse to buy another piece of kit - probably an expensive one!  What I have done instead is go for the much-praised 50mm 1.8 II and see how I get along with it.  I think I have been getting too dependent on, and lazy with, the 17-85 zoom.

Apart from this, I pretty much agree whole-heartedly with the 'carpet-bombing' approach.  I usually follow this principle anyway and get some decent shots of our furry friends.  Maybe I've been getting too fussy and failed to recognise that to get pin-sharp images I would need to spend a whole lot more time and money than I honestly have, in near perfect lighting conditions.  A reality check was in order and I hope I have come to my senses!  At least for now...