One Setting You HAVE to Change If You Are a Wildlife Shooter

The Keeper from the delayed burst. 

So I had a big aha moment today while out shooting. The story goes like this; I was walking along doing some scouting for the upcoming elk and moose rut, looking to get some big bulls this year, when all of the sudden out of nowhere two whitetail fawns came running straight at me! I know right, you are thinking "man, he must have snapped a few beauty frames" well you're kinda wrong. I have to say that one wasn't too bad and I am happy with it but the rest were pretty much garbage and I will tell you why.

I have the mentality that my camera never gets turned off when I am out shooting, I mean I wouldn't want to miss anything, ugh. But, recently my cameras settings were all reset and I had to go in and put them all back to my liking. Along the way I have been finding a few that I had missed. Today during this trip out I found out the hard way that my auto power off had been set back to its default of one minute. This is a big deal because if you end up being charged by baby deer your camera needs time to power back on and these few precious seconds can be the difference between getting 5 good frames or getting none at all. I am a Canon shooter so I can tell you how to change this setting with a Canon body but I am also sure that this must be an option with Nikon and the other big camera brands as well. 

To change this setting on the Canon bodies, specifically the 7DmrkII, you need to go to your menu settings and scroll to the wrench menu, it's yellow. In the second yellow wrench menu box the first option you see is the AUTO POWER OFF option. Click on it and you will see a variety of settings to choose from. These settings range from 1 minute to disable. I choose 30 minutes, it is the longest option other than completely disabling it all together. Initially I did choose disable but I found that I have a bad habit of never turning my cameras off so by going with 30 minutes if I forget to turn it off it will still eventually turn itself off. 

I thought mentioning this setting change would help those folks that are looking to fine tune there wildlife shooting. It is just another little thing that can help make a big difference when you are in the field. So, I hoped this little tip helps you and your efforts when out looking for wildlife beauties. To sum up this post I thought I would post the few frames that I was able to take after my camera decided to fire back up. Keep in mind the delay is less than two seconds and still that short period of time made all the difference.

The one frame that I did get was sharp and dynamic so I am happy with it but the others were, I feel, were more interesting compositions that really displayed the intensity of the two young deer.