New and Hoping to learn Wildlife photography and printing

[EdwardMH]

I am a disabled Veteran hoping to use photography and crafts as a means to ease my PTSD issues, I am new to real photography and a year ago I bought a Nikon D500 (Dream of Nikon Z9), Nikon PF500mm lens, and a Sigma 150-600mm zoom. I have a great desire to learn Wildlife photography most of all, I am also learning photo editing and sublimation at the same time. My dream is to get good enough to sell my wildlife photos sublimated on glass, aluminum, ceramic coasters, etc.

How ever currently my printouts do not look like the images on my computer monitors PC or Mac Studio. I am using an Epson SC-F570 sublimation printer and I bought a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus, AND Studio calibration devices to try and fix the issue, they should arrive today.

Any pointers on where to learn these things would be great.

[mike_halliwell]

Err, how come Doggy print is a mirror image?

Is it so when you 'transfer' it comes out the right way?

Colour balance of the birds is pretty Cyan/Blue and lacking a certain spark!

[EdwardMH]

Yes reversed to print on aluminum, if it were going on glass I would print normal.

I know my photos are awful, As I said I am just starting to learn (I know not a legitimate excuse and I should be doing better) I only recently started trying to learn to  shoot manual with auto ISO, I have so much to learn, all those wildlife photos were edited, posted to FB then downloaded from FB to my iPad, the originals look sharper and bettered color for some reason. actually the squirrel and owl were taken the same day about an hour apart in slightly different parts of the woods near sunset. And my first time shooting in the woods, I am still learning the setting and keep forgetting what does what. BUT I am trying 🙂

[mike_halliwell]

Your photos are NOT, by any means, awful!  Do you take RAW and convert to JPEG or TIFF?

Exposure and colour balance are a bit off, but focus and composition are just fine. 

Deciding what the aperture/shutter speed parameters you want (in Manual) and allowing Auto ISO to deal with the rest is just peachy.

There's bags more detail in the 'dark' Eagle feathers. It's the image processing that's off, not your photography, although digital photography has become so IT heavy... unlike the days of film!

Great lens choice too....😉

 

[ilkka_nissila]

I've not printed on transfer paper (I use inkjets on reflective paper) but generally one needs to read the manual rinstructions on print driver settings and settings on the software print dialog and follow them to the letter. At least on inkjets, it is recommended to select the appropriate paper and turn color management off from the epson printer driver, then, in the image editing software, select that Photoshop (or another similar software) manages colors and choose the correct paper profile from the list.   Relative vs. perceptual is also important. 

If you do these settings correctly, you should get a reasonable match of the colors in print vs. the on-screen colors (assuming the display has been calibrated). 

However, I've heard from people who had aluminum prints made that the images look different from how they appear on screen. I am not really sure what approach to use to improve the match. Iterate and ask Epson for advice. 

Viewing conditions also affect the print's appearance.

[joseph_smith3]

I use the same D500 and Nikon 500mm f5.6 pf lens. My preferred settings are Aperture Priority, Auto ISO, with a base shutter speed entered that varies with what I am shooting,  AF-C (even if shooting landscapes on a tripod),  Dynamic AF set to D25 most of the time or Group AF if birds are flying towards me, S is the subject is fixed. Focus is done with the AF-ON button (back button focusing). Matrix Metering. Exp adjustments if needed are done using the ex comp button. I try and use a tripod or monopod all the time, but hand hold occasionally. 

You can use the free NX Studio to download your images and process them. 

To learn the AF system suggest you look at Steve Perry videos at his site, Backcountry and sign up for his blog. His e book on th Nikon AF system f(or DSLRs ) is my bible. 

 

[EdwardMH]

5 hours ago, joseph_smith3 said:

I use the same D500 and Nikon 500mm f5.6 pf lens. My preferred settings are Aperture Priority, Auto ISO, with a base shutter speed entered that varies with what I am shooting,  AF-C (even if shooting landscapes on a tripod),  Dynamic AF set to D25 most of the time or Group AF if birds are flying towards me, S is the subject is fixed. Focus is done with the AF-ON button (back button focusing). Matrix Metering. Exp adjustments if needed are done using the ex comp button. I try and use a tripod or monopod all the time, but hand hold occasionally. 

You can use the free NX Studio to download your images and process them. 

To learn the AF system suggest you look at Steve Perry videos at his site, Backcountry and sign up for his blog. His e book on th Nikon AF system f(or DSLRs ) is my bible. 

 

Thats pretty close to my setup, I LOVE Steve Perry’s videos and I now have all of his educational eBooks, and videos except those dealing with the new Nikon Z9. I am in the process of watching the Lightroom tutorial now., tonight I am going to try and calibrate my Monitor and printer…

[Mary Doo1665009637]

5 hours ago, EdwardMH said:

tonight I am going to try and calibrate my Monitor and printer…

Good luck.  

[keith_burdett]

An excellent start in wildlife photography. With printing, calibration is key. When printing, custom settings often need to be applied in processing to suit the printing medium. Sometimes this is trial and error, some papers have downloadable custom curves you can apply, then tweak to suit. In addition, when I was inkjet printing with an Epson r2400 prints were always too dark until I reduced the ink output by around 20% (via Photoshop printer preferences). The custom curve makes the image look wrong on screen but in theory it prints correctly on the given paper.

Keep going, you evidently have some fieldwork skills to get this close, and an eye for composition. 

[keith_burdett]

Camera settingswise I do almost exactly as Joseph. My only difference is I shoot single af point. Nearly all my wildlife shooting is in woodland and I find the single point less easily distracted by stray branches, foliage etc. Slight difference in kit, D7100 or 800 with 300 afs f4.

[ilkka_nissila]

One of the reasons a print may look dark compared to screen is that the viewing lighting is too dim and the screen too bright. I set my display to 90 nits on the computer which I use for printing (I recall that for printing, even as low as 80 is recommended, but then the issue is that my laptop cannot display a full tonal scale if I bring it down that much, so in practice I've set my laptop to a bit brighter 100-120). I don't have good lighting in the room which I use for my printing (there is a halogen bulb in a central light hanging from the roof but it's not even enough to evaluate prints) but on my corridors I have halogen bulbs lighting the walls and I can use those to see how the prints would appear if displayed with bright lighting that has good colour reproduction. I would like to set up proper (standardized and even) lighting for evaluating prints but then since prints can be displayed in a variety of conditions, I haven't gotten around to investing in that. I basically adjust images based on the way the images appear on my calibrated display but it's important to keep pauses when working through a set of images as somehow I find myself adjusting to the displayed images can correcting them in my mind if I work too long. After having a pause and doing something else, one can see the images with fresh eyes and this can be more objective. Once I've limited the set of images to a smaller number, I can make test prints and see how they work in typical room lighting conditions and if there is any problem. If there is a problem it is usually that the main subject should be made slightly brighter relative to the surroundings when viewing the image in print. When viewing images on display, it's typically the brightest light source in the room and the eyes and brain tend to adjust to its brightness over time, which can make the image seem OK but in viewing a print, this adjustment doesn't happen to the same extent, and so to solve the situation I make masks and local adjustments and then another test print. I've learned to predict these problems to some extent and can make much of the work before making a test print, but not always. Anyway, I suspect the dye sub technology and printing on materials other than paper has a learning curve of its own. Let us know how the process works out for you and if you manage to get to a satisfactory workflow.

[EdwardMH]

On 10/8/2022 at 11:50 AM, mike_halliwell said:

Your photos are NOT, by any means, awful!  Do you take RAW and convert to JPEG or TIFF?

Exposure and colour balance are a bit off, but focus and composition are just fine. 

Deciding what the aperture/shutter speed parameters you want (in Manual) and allowing Auto ISO to deal with the rest is just peachy.

There's bags more detail in the 'dark' Eagle feathers. It's the image processing that's off, not your photography, although digital photography has become so IT heavy... unlike the days of film!

Great lens choice too....😉

 

I shoot RAW move from card to computer cull the bad out in windows photo viewer, then the rest I put in lightroom for mor scrutiny, the ones I like I edit to the limits of my learning knowledge then export as jpg.

4

[JDMvW]

Just another one to say you're doing fine.

Keep it up, that's the way to learn.