Below is example photo from my trip to the park yesterday.
Thi8s photo is a composite, because I simply could not get both ducks in focus. I was at the time shooting with a 500pf and went up to f11 to try to broaden the depth of field enough to make this work, but it wouldn't - there was just too much compression at 500mm. Going beyond f/11 would of course degrade image quality significantly from higher ISO, diffraction, even worse subject/background separation.
I decided to try to decrease that compression so I swapped to my 180-600 so I could use a lower focal length. This was not only not enough of a difference, but it also created a dynamic where to keep the subjects a decent size in the frame I had to move closer, which of course spooked the ducks, but more to the technical point here also kept making the depth of field more shallow as I lowered the zoom range to try increase depth of field.
So to ask a broader question: how can we get multiple animals in focus while maintaining good image quality? I've seen this sort of discussion before and the answers are frequently the obvious things I've already mentioned: aperture, focal length, subject distance. Repositioning yourself, if possible, so that the subjects are at a more similar distance from the camera, is also a possibility, though due to the terrain this was not really possible for the photo I've posted.
Yet what I have not really seen discussed is how get multiple subjects in focus while maintaining image quality. The biggest issue I have found when trying to do it is subject size/distance. If you're close enough the subjects are reasonably frame filling, it starts to get very, very difficult to get a good depth of field regardless of what settings you use.
Thi8s photo is a composite, because I simply could not get both ducks in focus. I was at the time shooting with a 500pf and went up to f11 to try to broaden the depth of field enough to make this work, but it wouldn't - there was just too much compression at 500mm. Going beyond f/11 would of course degrade image quality significantly from higher ISO, diffraction, even worse subject/background separation.
I decided to try to decrease that compression so I swapped to my 180-600 so I could use a lower focal length. This was not only not enough of a difference, but it also created a dynamic where to keep the subjects a decent size in the frame I had to move closer, which of course spooked the ducks, but more to the technical point here also kept making the depth of field more shallow as I lowered the zoom range to try increase depth of field.
So to ask a broader question: how can we get multiple animals in focus while maintaining good image quality? I've seen this sort of discussion before and the answers are frequently the obvious things I've already mentioned: aperture, focal length, subject distance. Repositioning yourself, if possible, so that the subjects are at a more similar distance from the camera, is also a possibility, though due to the terrain this was not really possible for the photo I've posted.
Yet what I have not really seen discussed is how get multiple subjects in focus while maintaining image quality. The biggest issue I have found when trying to do it is subject size/distance. If you're close enough the subjects are reasonably frame filling, it starts to get very, very difficult to get a good depth of field regardless of what settings you use.
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