We recently came back from a road trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, and obviously, I did a lot of landscape and wildlife photography. But as I downloaded all the photos to my computer, and started to work on them, I realized I have done a couple of big rookie mistakes that have cost me some good photos. I kind of feel ashamed that I committed these mistakes, as it shows my lack of mastery over my own camera, which is of course because I’m not shooting as much these days. So I just wanted to share what happened and how I could have prevented those errors.

Both errors were caused by wrong camera settings. The first one was setting my Sony A7R II to APS-C mode the day before, and leaving it in that mode for the first few hours of shooting the day after. This of course cost me a ton of megapixels, but also made my ultrawide angle lens into a wide angle lens, which embarrassingly I didn’t even notice! The second error was even more embarrassing, since I totally forgot to choose the right mode for wildlife photography! We were on the road to Jenny Lake that we saw a grizzly mom with 4 cubs - such a rare encounter. I was so excited that I just rushed into taking pictures, forgetting that my camera is in aperture priority mode at F8.0 and at auto-ISO, and since my min shutter speed was 1/125s, the camera would default to ISO 100 or so. Obviously this resulted in many of my photos turning out blurry. Fortunately, halfway through shooting, I realized this error, and changed to shutter priority mode. I managed to get some good shots in the end, but I lost some good ones for sure. It could have been worse had the encounter been shorter, or if I had not realized my mistakes after some time. Throughout the years, I have done other mistakes such as leaving my camera in jpeg mode, or using high ISO for landscape photography in good light, or using high min shutter speed for landscape photography resulting in high ISO, etc. I bet you have made the same, or similar mistakes as well.

So how could I have prevented these mistakes? You might say, of course you have to check each and every setting on your camera before shooting. Well, that’s not always possible. There are simply too many to keep in mind, and one will inevitably slip through the cracks. This is not a foolproof solution. I would argue that in order to minimize the risk of making rookie mistakes such as above, it’s best to follow these steps:

  1. Shoot a lot with your camera. Seems obvious, but it’s really important to KNOW your camera, and make mistakes in less critical situations, and learn from them. 

  2. Practice the kind of shooting you’re planning to do, before leaving on the big trip. If you’re going to do wildlife photography in a once-in-a-lifetime safari trip, and you rarely do wildlife, DO practice in your walks around the neighborhood on local wildlife to learn more about what can go wrong. 

  3. Use the memory modes. I think this is the most important tool you have on the field to help you minimize the risk of making rookie mistakes. For example, you can set up one mode for wildlife, and another for landscape, with according settings. For the wildlife mode, set the camera to shutter priority at 1/500s or 1/1000s, and auto-ISO, with RAW, and (if desired) APS-C mode on. For landscape mode, set the camera to aperture priority at F8.0 or so, with ISO 100, APS-C mode off, and shoot in RAW. Then practice enough to build the muscle memory to choose the right memory mode when you encounter each scenario.

  4. (bonus) Take your laptop/iPad with you along in a long trip, and everyday review your photos to make sure you’re learning from your mistakes.

Hope this resonates with you, and the tips above helps you in future shoots! If you made similar mistakes before, let me know in the comments.