Since I would be passing the Lake District in late October and mid November I decided to try my hand at Red Squirrel photography. Visiting twice was beneficial as I was able to reflect on the results I obtained the first visit and make some tweaks for the second visit in mid November.
Red Squirrel Photography – Camera Settings
We don’t get Red squirrels where I live in Northampton but I have seen them a few times before and even photographed them many years ago. Previous sightings had been when on holiday in The Lake District and I’ve also seen them in the garden of the Youth Hostel at Dufton in North Yorkshire (which has since closed).
On my visit in late October I mostly decided to use my Sony 135mm G Master lens, shooting at wide apertures like f1.8 and f2.2. This had the advantage of keeping my ISO low, even in the dark woodland. It did mean I had to get very close to the squirrels but luckily this was possible after some time, leaving Hazelnuts on certain branches and on some feeder boxes. Having reviewed these images I felt the shallow depth of field using apertures like f1.8 was perhaps too shallow. The face and eyes of the squirrels were sharp but in some images the tail was out of focus. On my return visit I decided I would mostly shoot with a longer focal length zoom lens where the widest apertures would be f5.6 or f6.3.
On my visit in mid November I used my Tamron 150-500mm lens. Generally the images I took were using focal lengths between 300mm and 450mm. At the apertures previously mentioned this was enough to capture a sharp squirrel whilst still blurring the background to help highlight the subject. Even though my lens has built in image stabilisation I tried to keep my shutter speeds around 1/250 second or faster, since red squirrels seem to move quickly. Even when sitting still their claws and whiskers are often still twitching at pace. The downside of using these shutter speeds and apertures in a dark woodland was that I had to use a much highter ISO which adds noise to the images. Thankfully modern software like Topaz DeNoise AI helps clean up noisy images.
In terms of my actual camera settings I was mostly using a wide focus area pattern on my Sony a7iv camera. This combined with continuous autofocus seemed to work very well. Another thing I noticed was that the eye autofocus setting on the Sony a7iv seemed to work best in Bird mode. As owners of this camera will know you have options for Humans, Animals and Birds. Animal eye AF works great for dogs and cats. When you look at a squirrel though it’s clear that their eyes have much more in common with birds in terms of size and the fact they are almost perfectly round.
Noise Reduction For Wildlife Photography
It’s fair to say that of all the different genres in photography, it’s wildlife photographers who seem to use noise reduction software the most. A combination of long telephoto lenses, smaller apertures and shy fast moving subjects results in the need to use much higher ISO settings in order to capture a well exposed image.
A few years ago I purchased a copy of Topaz DeNoise AI and I’ve generally been happy with the results. Many will say that other, newer software does an even better job of noise reduction. Two that I keep tabs on are DXO PureRaw and Photoshop AI-Denoise, which I will briefly discuss below.
- DXO PureRaw or PhotoLab. What I like about DXO products is their huge library of camera and lens profiles. The software takes your RAW file and optimises it based on the camera and lens combination used whilst also removing any noise. Those who use this software often say it produces the best RAW images. DXO PureRaw converts your original raw image into a better RAW image known as a DNG file. This DNG can then be edited further in your editing software of choice. The DNG files are much larger than the original RAW images. My biggest gripe though is that most of this modern AI image processing software runs fairly slowly on my laptop. It’s not a very old laptop but it has an integrated graphics card and AI processing seems to require high end graphics cards like are often found in gaming computers. I should point out that the difference between PureRaw and PhotoLab is that the former only produces DNG files to be worked on further in an image editor whereas PureRaw is a complete editing tool in much the same way as Photoshop, Capture One or Affinity Photo.
- Photoshop AI-Denoise. Abobe’s answer to noise reduction has recently improved greatly and is now a match for the best available. It cannot work on jpeg files like Topaz but that’s not a problem for all of us who shoot RAW images. For those who already use Photoshop or Lightroom, the improvements in noise reduction could mean you no longer need to buy extra third party software. The issue for me however is processing times.
Until I upgrade my computer I’ve found Topaz offers the best combination of quality and speed. I’m not saying it’s the best software on the market but it runs well on my 2020 laptop and I already own a copy. I don’t see the point in paying for even more software for those rare times when I try wildlife photography only to be frustrated with processing times.
Red Squirrel Photography Gallery
I took lots of photos over the two visits to the Lake District. Below is a gallery of just some of these images.
If you have any questions about this article feel free to contact me. For those with more experience with wildlife photography than myself, feel free to leave any comment that you feel may help readers who are interested in red squirrel photography.
