Camera Equipment to Photograph Wolves

Our trip to Yellowstone National Park to see the wolves was a photographic disaster! So far, we know what NOT to do, but we are still learning what to do.

Our first mistake was renting lenses that were not big enough. We rented 400mm Canon L lenses, and not a single photograph came out sharp. We thought maybe they just weren't good lenses but that turns out not to be the likely culprit.

On the drive home, I decided to give my contact for school at Kenmore Camera a call to pick his brain, Michael Wewer, and he immediately pinpointed our biggest mistake. As landscape photographers, we are not accustomed to using long lenses, nor do we know the basic rules of thumb. Michael said that your shutter speed has to be greater than your lens. In other words, since the lenses we were using were 400mm, our shutter speed should have been at least 1/400 of a second. We were using 1/350.

The next problem was our tripods. John was using a cheap one that had a tremendous amount of movement for such a heavy lens, and I was using my good tripod, but the ball mount was not enough to hold the lens steady either. Mistake number three. Even the slightest movement of the camera, like when you press the shutter release, is enough to cause camera shake even though we were shooting at what we considered a high shutter speed.

We also saw a lot of people using spotting scopes with cell phone mounted at the eyepiece to photograph the wolves. They certainly were getting great magnification with the scopes compared to our 400mm lens.

In Coeur d'Alene we started in researching spotting scopes and lenses and then once we got home we shifted our attention to cameras. Maybe it was time for new cameras, as ours are ten years and 16 years old.

Our research led us to a trip into Kenmore Camera today. We learned a lot from Michael. He was able to tell us the pros and cons of the various options, and we ended up for now with two new camera bodies and new tripod mounts. John has a landscape lens on order, and I also bought a 24-105mm zoom lens for my new camera. Meanwhile, we are on a waitlist for a used tripod mount that will steady a 600mm lens. We will be renting a Sigma 150-600mm lens in January to photography the eagles of the Skagit River to see if we like the lens. If we do, we'll buy one. John's camera is a Sony a7R II, which is an amazing landscape camera with 42 megapixels. It will also suffice for the wolves, but we may run into trouble getting the ISO high enough to compensate for the fast shutter speed when using the 150-600mm lens with a 1.4x converter (which means you have to push the shutter even higher). To balance out John's camera, I bought the Sony a7S, which only has 20 megapixels but has the capability to shoot at a super high ISO (409,000 squared) and is great in low light without noise. It will be great for the wolves. We also got a lens converter so we can use the Sigma 150-600mm lens as well as the Canon lenses we already own.

Meanwhile, we ordered from B & H a Zeiss Conquest Gavia spotting scope, a step up adapter, and a camera adapter so we can use the scope with John's Lumix GH3. We didn't know we'd have new Sonys when we placed the order, so if we like it, we'll get setup to use my Sony on the scope, which will definitely be necessary because the scopes don't let in enough light at such high magnification for photography.

Next comes trying out some of the new equipment! I'll post again when we've had a chance to use our new equipment.

Update: we bought a Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens, the Zeiss scope, and adapters for both a Lumix G9 and the Sony AS7 cameras and a 50mm lens. We bought a new Wimberly mount for the Sigma lens and a used one from Adorama for the scope.

Wolves of Yellowstone National Park

We made our first winter visit to Yellowstone National Park this December to view and photograph wolves. We learned a lot about finding wolves and photographing them; our first attempt was not very successful but we're returning this February armed with different equipment and knowledge,

We arrived in the park on the afternoon of Dec. 22. We met Pete in Emigrant to purchase his map of the only open road in YNP in the winter, and he advised that we simply look for other people pulled off the road to find wolves. That worked well for us that day, as we got to see and photograph the Wapiti Lake pack after they had fed on an elk carcass. They were a long ways away, about 300 yards, so they were little dots in our photos, but it was still cool to see!

One gray yearling and five black pups are inside the red circle.

Dec. 23, we were delighted to see three moose and two coyotes on our way into the park from the Northeast Entrance, Cooke City, as well as herds of elk and bighorn sheep. Soon, we discovered a large group of watchers stationed near Elk Creek and we set up there. The white alpha female of the Wapiti Lake pack was curled into a ball, sleeping on top of a hill while her gray yearlings and black pups from the spring idled nearby and in the valley below the hill. She had been there since 8:00 am, sleeping; we arrived at about 10:40 and waited over two hours for her to move. Our feet grew cold, and I was just about ready to go to the car to get warmed up when she stood up. Finally! It was rather comical as we all started snapping pictures like paparazzi and she stretched and then squatted to poop! But we got some shots of her stretching and were happy.

A moose and her calf forage on the willows along Soda Butte Creek near the Northeast entrance to YNP.

This coyote crossed behind me as I followed the first one, who crossed the road in front of our car. The first waited for the this one, and they went up the hill together.

Farther down the road, a coyote ran westward, stopping to look behind him often. This suggested that the Wapiti Lake pack was not far behind.

The white alpha female (center, top of the hill) pokes her head up after a four hour nap and a hearty meal of elk.

We then moved up the road to watch her move the pack. The next hill over, they scouted a bull elk and a couple of bison. The alpha female crossed the road to the south, but her black pups and one gray yearling stayed behind to check out the prey. One grey even scoped out the elk right in front of us! We were treated to about half an hour of howling before they moved on.

In the foreground on the left, a female gray wolf probes the elk, who didn't budge. Had the elk run, the wolves would have given chase. This elk was healthy, confident, and strong--not a good target for wolves who had eaten the last three days out of four.

Three black pups howl, and their mother, the white alpha female, answers from a distance to the left (southwest; off camera).

Two black pups check out bison to the right (off camera).

A black female pup leaves the bison and elk to follow her sisters and her mother.

A grey female yearling makes her way down a valley to follow the alpha female to the southwest.

During our viewing, we met Rick and Nancy, and another woman whose name I think was Kara. Nancy got a great shot of the white alpha with her Canon 7D and a Sigma 600mm lens. When I showed Kara my pictures and zoomed in, dismayed by the blurriness, Rick tried to give us a few pointers. John had read that it was best to shoot in shutter speed priority with a shutter speed of 350 and auto aperture. Rick advised shooting manually. We made some setting adjustments on our cameras and hoped for the best. He also told us how he knew of a carcass that he wanted to hike down to, but that there were too many people around that day. He didn't want to have a pack of tourists follow him.

Later, before we headed home, we stopped one more time at the spot where we originally saw the white alpha female. While we looked about, another car came along and it turned out to be the friendly Dutchman we had encountered at the beginning of the day. He talked to us for a while, introduced himself as Jort, and told us a great deal about the Wapiti Lake pack, viewing wolves, and the weather. From him, we learned that the pack we saw was all female; the males of Wapiti Lake were somewhere else. The pack numbers about 20-23 in all, and we saw 11 of them (female).

On the way home, we saw an otter in the Lamar River in the dwindling light.

Dec. 24 we didn't see much. There was a sighting of a grey female, wolf 1118, in the Lamar Valley that morning. She had a crushed front elbow, and was too far for our 400mm lenses to photograph so after looking through others' spotting scopes, we moved on. We got some great shots later of a pair of coyotes and that was it. We returned at last light to watch the sunset between Elk Creek and Hellroaring.

A pair of coyotes enjoy the sunshine and stay alert for a meal.

There were plenty of bison every day, rooting in the snow for food.

Dec. 25, we didn't have any luck again, so we did some landscape photography in the beautiful morning sunshine, and then we cross country skied on the groomed and tracked Blacktail Plateau. It was fun to see the tracks of elk, bison, and coyote up close. After a couple of miles, we stopped to have lunch and photographed a herd of elk.

Driving into the park Christmas morning, it was a beautiful day as we headed for the Lamar Valley.

The elk looked like rocks to the naked eye but the camera revealed the truth.

On the way back from skiing, we saw another bull elk. They keep to themselves because of the presence of their natural predator, the wolf.

Dec. 26, we made our last trip along the 50 miles of highway through the north of the park, just missing five wolves at Slough Creek. We met some old friends, Jim and June, in Bozeman for a great lunch at Starky's Authentic Americana (GREAT vegan Reuben) and a short visit. We stayed the night in Coeur d'Alene at a great apartment through Airbnb.

When we got home, we read the wolf report on a blog John follows, and we found that we missed wolves the 23-26. Rick had hiked out to the carcass and found wolves on the 24 and the 25th, and Jort found a dead wolf near Elk Creek on the 26th, most likely hit by a car. We were disappointed in our photographs and ability to find wolves, and resolved to improve on our trip in February. We are currently researching spotting scope-camera combinations, as well as more powerful lenses and how to use them. We made some rookie mistakes, resulting in photos that were very much not sharp. Wildlife photography is new to both of us, so we are learning as we go!

When we return in February, we hope to have better equipment, and a better idea of how to spot wolves and communicate with those who are regular wolf watchers.