Shooting Herps part 1 (a primer)

This is definitely a niche subject. It falls between macro and action as these little critters often move quickly and they are sometimes small. I don’t purport to be a herp shooter, certainly not the likes that I have seen across the internet. What I have is a workable knowledge of portraiture and SOME experience shooting herps here and there. I’ve kind of combined what I know from those two things and put them together to form this article.

I’ve attempted to write this in a pretty simple way but it is my hope that you have some working knowledge of the basics of photography.

Before we get to the nitty-gritty details let’s take a look at two preliminary things so that we are all on the same page.


• Digital SLR versus Digital Compact

Simply put either can be used. You will have more versatility with the digital SLR than a compact as you are constrained to whatever the compact has for a lens. The SLR’s advantage is being able to change lenses. The Compacts advantage is lightness and portability. The DSLR’s disadvantage is it’s heaviness.

Whatever you choose, a DSLR or Digital Compact you will want to ensure that your camera has a hotshoe.

A hotshoe on a camera.

• Raw vs Jpeg

Many swear by Raw, others are strictly jpeg shooters if for nothing else than their digital portability. A typical Raw may take 10mb or more of space, while a jpeg may take 3-4 and be more than sufficient to blow up into a decent sized print. That said, Raw has more post processing “headroom” to correct color, white balance, exposure or enhance certain colors.

Some cameras shoot Raw plus JPEG at the same time. Just remember your camera will “develop” the JPEG in camera and it will be to whatever settings YOU have set. The Raw will have to be adjusted later, on a computer.

All that aside, I shoot both Raw + Jpeg when I am photographing animals. It’s my preference and I don’t care about how much space my hard drive has. Bad photos I delete. Good photos I back up to multiple locations.

And without further ado, let’s get down to it and we’ll start with Lighting.

Unless you are out in the wilds and the light is perfectly illuminating things (lucky is the word) … then you will have to create the light.

Domestic Lighting

This is photographing herps in captivity and is very different than in the wilds though many concepts are yet interchangeable.

Your typical terrarium or tank will have some sort of light. It may be a standard light bulb (tungsten) or any of the other 20 different types of lighting each falling in its own space of the Kelvin scale.

The Kelvin Scale

Available light. The problem with using the terrarium’s available light is that it usually isn’t bright enough to allow you to capture your little pet without blur. Yes, you could increase your ISO but that also increases softness and a loss of detail (yeah and grain too which is good or bad depending). In addition, your tanks light will create a hue across your photo if you aren't using a flash to over power it. This color could be sickly green, red, dark yellow, whatever. But it likely isn't going to be pleasing to your eye.

Your typical off camera flash is balanced for Daylight. That means on the Kelvin scale, its temperature is daylight. So if you are shooting JPEG you can adjust your white balance to Daylight.

The advantage of a flash is that it allows you to program in a higher shutter speed and thus stop motion in its tracks. The only time you want to use a lower sync speed combined with a flash is when you want any ambient light to “burn in” and be seen in the final photo. Below you see the photo on the left has a very dark background. This is done with a higher shutter speed and flash combo. The photo on the right is flash but the ambient light is "burned in" thus you see some of the background.

Remember these key data in photography:

Shutter speed controls ambient exposure. A 1/30th shutter speed will "burn in" considerable more ambient light than say 1/250th.

Aperture (ISO, and Flash to Subject Distance) affect flash exposure. Ambient is what’s there whether it be sunlight, lamplight or lantern.
Flash exposure is what you create with your flash whether it is on your camera or in your other hand or sitting on a light stand. The two variables besides the aperture control which affect exposure is the distance of your flash to your subject.

You can do a simple test, hold your hand in front of you and take a photo with the flash on. Now move your hand closer to the flash (or further away) and notice the difference. The last variable is ISO which is what we once were calling "film speed". The higher the ISO the more "worker bees" there are gathering light and therefore because there are more workers you don't need as much light. Most digital cameras do well up to 800 ISO and begin to show significant grain thereafter.

In the next article on this subject I will get into HOW to shoot some photos.