actually taking the photo. Of course if your subject is still,
shutter lag will be less of an issue. Just make sure the picture
is actually taken before you move the camera!

If you want to take photos of a dog in motion, learn to

pan the camera. Move your body, holding the camera, as the
dog moves. Try to keep the dog in the same position in the
field of view as the dog passes in front of you. This will
often result in the dog’s body being in sharp focus with the
background blurred horizontally, something we’ve learned
to interpret as indicating the subject is moving. Tracking the
subject in this manner can help your camera’s autofocus
find the subject and lock onto it. If you hold the camera
steady and wait until the subject moves into the field 
of view there’s a greater chance the camera will not find
the subject in time or will focus on something else, such 
as the background. 

You don’t necessarily have to have the subject centered in

the middle of the photo. There is a photo composition rule
called the rule of thirds. Visualize a grid with lines drawn
vertically 1/3 from the left and right edges and 1/3 from the
top and bottom of the photo. It can be effective to have the
main part of the photo’s subject at one of these lines rather
than very close to an edge or directly centered.

But rules are made to be broken. There was a nice entry

in the recent club photo contest which showed a dog as a
relatively small object on a wide open seashore. That worked
for that photo. Yet often a dog shown as a small figure in a
wide expansive space is going to be a less effective photo
than if the photographer had been closer to the subject or
used a zoom lens to make a tighter composition.

Be patient. And persistent. Take some time to try different

angles and wait for different behaviors or expressions. Review
your photos before the session ends. Take a look at some of
the photos you’ve just shot and see what can be done better
or just differently. You can try to pose the dog, which might
try your patience and the dog’s, or it may well be best just to
watch what the dog is doing and wants to do and capture
that. Allow for and take advantage of spontaneity. The best
shot can be one you didn’t plan for. So be ready!

I usually use my digital single-lens-reflex (DSLR) cameras

which have interchangeable lenses and permit me to view
the scene through the lens that’s being used, but having 

that type of equipment is not at all necessary. “The best
camera is the one you have with you.” These days when so
many people have a cell phone (with built-in camera) with
them much of the time, it’s certainly better to use a cell
phone’s camera than to miss the shot because you don’t
have a single-function device — a camera — with you. Cell
phones and smaller cameras without interchangeable lenses,
often called “point-and-shoot” cameras, are capable of 
taking very good photos of our dogs, especially outdoors.

The photos accompanying this article were taken with

two cameras, a Nikon D300 (dating from 2007) and a Nikon
D700 (dating from 2008, but purchased second-hand years
later). These photos were taken from 2008 through 2013.
I’m still using those two cameras, even though they’ve long
been discontinued. I used them both to shoot the national
specialty in Tucson in April. You don’t need the “latest and
greatest.” The D300 has an APS-C or “crop frame” sized 
sensor, with the comparison being to the size of a frame of
35mm film. After the introduction of digital cameras, it took
years for manufacturers to provide cameras with “full frame”
sensors with the sensor the same size as 35mm film. The D700
is a full-frame camera, which provides some advantages 
over a crop-frame camera, notably that wide-angle lenses
give a wider field of view on full frame than the same lenses
on a crop-frame camera, as the crop, in effect, gives a 
magnification of 1.5 over the indicated focal length, the
standard of comparison being a 35mm-film camera, and the
larger sensor can yield higher quality with high ISO photos. 

I used three different lenses in the photos printed here.

The 18-200 lens is a wide-range lens (wide angle through
telephoto) with a maximum aperture varying from f/3.5 to
f/5.6, depending on how far the lens is zoomed. Such a lens
provides great flexibility but isn’t as sharp as the 35-70 or
70-200 lenses, each of which has a constant maximum 
aperture of f/2.8 (relatively wide) and is very, sharp. The 
70-200 is also very large and heavy. Each of these lenses was
purchased used, and all can be used on each of my cameras.

But don’t get hung up on gear. You don’t need a 

complicated, expensive camera to take good photos. You
don’t need the latest camera the manufacturer wants to sell
you. Learn to use the camera you have and use it well. Know
its controls and adjustments: how to adjust the focus and, 
if user settable, things like shutter speed, aperture and 
sensitivity to light (ISO setting). Not all cameras permit the
photographer access to these settings, and even if you have
access to them, often you’ll want to let the camera’s built-in
“intelligence” select the settings for you. Don’t be afraid of
using Auto or Program settings or a Scene setting (Closeup,
Action, Portrait, etc.).

If you can, start a photo session with a fresh memory

card, or at least one that has plenty of space for more 
photos. Have a well-charged battery and perhaps a spare so
you don’t run out of power.

Take full advantage of the fact that digital “film” 

generally has no cost. Take plenty of photos. Later you can
delete the ones you don’t like. But you can’t save the ones
that were only snapped with your mind’s eye!  

I

Saber Tails   

IWinter 2015    

www.pbgv.org

49

Bernie Sounding Off.From the same session as Bernie and Susie,but
here Bernie decided to do some vocalizing. Susie looks cute, but I didn’t
care for Bernie’s position and motion blur. However, this was just one of
many photos I took in that session, so I had others to choose from.