Why don't you?

[meridklt]

I'm so very new to all this and when viewing photos and presume videos if I could find any: why don't the posters say how far away they are from the specific subject, as I presume for instance many wild birds and animals must be some considerable distance, but not necessarily.

 

[iamdlewis]

Well I have a crap sense of distance and by the time I get to editing I will have less of an idea as to how far away I was and it will just get worse by the time posting comes around. Besides it wouldn't really be useful information unless you were shooting with the same sensor size and MP count.

In the thread with the question about the 100-400 the equivalency was mentioned and it was stated that your A6xxx camera with the 100-400 would have a Full Frame equivalence of a 150-600. That equivalency really means that your field of view is the same. You taking an image with the A6xxx at 400mm will have the same field of view as me taking one with an A1 at 600mm but your image is 24mp and mine is 51mp. I can crop my image down to 24mp and I would then have an image that has a field of view closer to 900mm.

• ILCE-1
• Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS (SEL100400GM)
• 400.0 mm
• ƒ/5.6
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 800

I know that the bird in this image was about 20 feet away because this was taken from a blind. This was taken with an A1 at 400mm. Unless you want to do some serious math to calculate back what the uncropped version of this image is, then calculate down to what the image size would be for your camera, you are really not going to know what that 20 feet means to you.

After a few thousand shots and edits you will learn what distances are worth the effort for a given subject size. Also what you find worth the effort will be different than what others will find worth it.

Also please remember that wildlife photography isn't just about the image, it is also about being out there so please be patient with yourself.

 

[Richard A]

I guess when I'm photographing birds, which isn't very often, the last thing I am thinking about is how far away they are. Way too many other things to consider to get a decent shot.

 

[AlphaWorld]

When I'm photographing a bird in the sky, I really do not know how far away the bird is. No idea, other than more than one metre, probably less than a kilometre. In most cases I'm not sure how big the bird is, and I am frequently shooting the bird at an angle, and cropping the image. I quite simply do not know how far away it is. I'm tracking the bird as it flying, and my camera does not have distance finding built-in (maybe in the next model?).

Why do you want to know?

 

[Killtimer]

Is the EXIF field "Focus Distance 2" not accurate?