Shooting cats is hard!

[strickj]

I've spent the past hour trying to shoot my new cat. Three hotdogs, a few scratches and a little blood later, I end up with a bunch of shots like this

I did get a couple of good ones tho.

,

Edited September 8, 2011 by strickj

[vontar]

at least there is no red eye.

You might have a trophy, let it grow up

[qwkvert]

Lmao... I was def expecting to see blood... Lol. Nice play on words.

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.172844,-86.506578

[bluedog]

Put him in a light box... that you don't mind being destroyed.

I have so much respect for pet and children photogs. I've tried and failed many times.

[quietguy]

I have so much respect for pet and children photogs. I've tried and failed many times.

Kids and dogs you can bribe into compliance. Cats, not so much.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Do any high-end cameras nowadays have the ability to take fast burst-mode multiple pictures at high resolution? Or is the high-res picture data so big that it takes too long between shots to save to memory? My old 2 MP small nikon can take something like 30 in a burst, but does not take very high resolution, though the quality is not bad considering.

I got some of the best shots of the dawgs taking motion video in a little Panasonic SDRAM video recorder. Then grab the good frames out of the video. Some of the pictures are nicely posed but the resolution is poor and some frames which may have been the best are motion-blurred. If a camera could record at video frame rate, but with lots of megapixels and fast shutter then odds alone would seem to assure at least a few good poses?

[Guest Sgt. Joe]

Ahhh....... the little ones on the move make for some great targets, and a black one at night....that is an awesome challenge:D

[strickj]

Put him in a light box... that you don't mind being destroyed.

Yea. A light box would have been so much better then my cyc.

Kids and dogs you can bribe into compliance. Cats, not so much.

Well, dogs will listen if you have treats. You give them one treat and snap a shot, give them another treat, snap a shot.... and after a few times they realize they'll get a treat everytime they hear the shutter.

little kids are like cats though. They quit caring the instant the treat is gone

Do any high-end cameras nowadays have the ability to take fast burst-mode multiple pictures at high resolution? Or is the high-res picture data so big that it takes too long between shots to save to memory? My old 2 MP small nikon can take something like 30 in a burst, but does not take very high resolution, though the quality is not bad considering.

I got some of the best shots of the dawgs taking motion video in a little Panasonic SDRAM video recorder. Then grab the good frames out of the video. Some of the pictures are nicely posed but the resolution is poor and some frames which may have been the best are motion-blurred. If a camera could record at video frame rate, but with lots of megapixels and fast shutter then odds alone would seem to assure at least a few good poses?

Depends on the camera and memory card. I can usually get 10 or so shots before the cache slows me down. But my lights can only give a couple pops before I have to stop and let them recharge.

Edited September 9, 2011 by strickj

[TGO David]

Nah... you just have to lead them a little more than you do children or dogs. Seriously. Children and dogs are hard to photograph.

[FUJIMO]

I am curious about the fork in the first pic, lol.

[peejman]

If you think shooting them is hard, try herding them. I spend large portions of my work day herding cats.

Nice pics.

[TGO David]

I am curious about the fork in the first pic, lol.

It's a metaphor. These shots are part of a promotional for a Chinese diner.

[FUJIMO]

Lmao !!

[strickj]

lol

The fork had the bribe hot dog on it

[JAB]

I thought it was all about juxtapositioning. The cat is small, furry and cute. However...

"The fork is a cold, shiny tool to pierce, tear and ingest."

Apologies to Jello Biafra.

[Jonnin]

Do any high-end cameras nowadays have the ability to take fast burst-mode multiple pictures at high resolution? Or is the high-res picture data so big that it takes too long between shots to save to memory? My old 2 MP small nikon can take something like 30 in a burst, but does not take very high resolution, though the quality is not bad considering.I got some of the best shots of the dawgs taking motion video in a little Panasonic SDRAM video recorder. Then grab the good frames out of the video. Some of the pictures are nicely posed but the resolution is poor and some frames which may have been the best are motion-blurred. If a camera could record at video frame rate, but with lots of megapixels and fast shutter then odds alone would seem to assure at least a few good poses?

You can take high res video on a modern camera and from that, using software and possibly some pricy hardware, you can pull off individual frames of high res to get nice still shots. Its often better to have the good equipment tied to a good computer rather than fool with trying to get a gigantic memory stick -- high res video can easily eat up gigabytes in just a short amount of time. Worse, if you are really serious, you do not use destructive video encoding, but simple compression in an AVI or similar format that preserves the original data 100%. If you have forgotten, most modern video codecs use a variation of mpeg (wavelets or DCTs etc) that discard data in order to compress it to a managable size. The AVI format uses simple compressions that do not damage the data but do not compress it much either. An hour of video in such a format really does take up gigabytes of space, more if you have uncompressed sound too (same idea, mp3 can damage the data at high compression rates).

[Jonnin]

if you really wanted to know, by the way, video is about 30 frames / sec. A high res video stream is typically 1280x720. A pixel is tpyically 3 bytes long, one for each of red, green, and blue. So each second is 82,944,000 bytes. Divide that by 2^20 (the true defination of a megabyte, its not exactly 1 million), you get 79 mb/ sec. Even if you were able to use simple lossless compression to get 50% size reduction, its still 40 mb/sec. 2400 MB/min --- thats getting close to 2.5 gigabytes/second. See why you want to plug a high res system into a PC? Probably one with a raid zero or similar style disk setup and massive IO. And 50% data reduction is very, very generous, its often only 10-15% with lossless methods! For these reasons, its uncommon for normal users to use the ultra high quality stuff, but its always fun to show the numbers.

Edited September 9, 2011 by Jonnin

[southernasylum]

It's a metaphor. These shots are part of a promotional for a Chinese diner.

Isn't the Chinese word for cat chicken?

[QuietDan]

I've spent the past hour trying to shoot my new cat. Three hotdogs, a few scratches and a little blood later, I end up with a bunch of shots like this

I did get a couple of good ones tho.

,

Best thread title EVER!

I thought taxidermy would be involved!

[Guest GT_Rat]

I thought taxidermy would be involved!

It might be if he spends enough time trying to take pictures of cats.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

You can take high res video on a modern camera and from that, using software and possibly some pricy hardware, you can pull off individual frames of high res to get nice still shots. Its often better to have the good equipment tied to a good computer rather than fool with trying to get a gigantic memory stick -- high res video can easily eat up gigabytes in just a short amount of time. Worse, if you are really serious, you do not use destructive video encoding, but simple compression in an AVI or similar format that preserves the original data 100%. If you have forgotten, most modern video codecs use a variation of mpeg (wavelets or DCTs etc) that discard data in order to compress it to a managable size. The AVI format uses simple compressions that do not damage the data but do not compress it much either. An hour of video in such a format really does take up gigabytes of space, more if you have uncompressed sound too (same idea, mp3 can damage the data at high compression rates).

Hi Jonnin

Those are good points. I don't have experience with high-end gear. Still using the circa-2003 Nikon E2100 and likely won't get another still camera until that one croaks. It is only a 2 MP camera, but takes what I consider very good pics considering the resolution. Ferinstance the front-facing camera in my Motorola Xoom supposedly is 5 MP but it probably does not take as good a picture as the old Nikon. I could be wrong because haven't had time to work hard trying to get good quality pics with the Xoom, but the samples I've shot so far did not knock me out. Apparently the number of pixels is not the most telling spec of picture quality. Have had other non-camera portable devices with > 2MP cameras built-in, that did not take impressive pictures.

Anyway the little old Nikon 2100 can do good enough to make a decent 8.5 X 11 print on the color laser printer. Arguably better than most 8 X 10's I ever shot with my ancient Nikon F film camera. Theoretically the old Nikon F should make a decen't enough 8X10, but I never shot many that looked especially great. Guess the high-end current cameras take fine pictures. The Nikon 2100 shoots 1600X1200 max resolution, 24 bit color, and its native file format is jpg. Typical file sizes are in the 600 KB to 800 KB ballpark. If it could shoot continuous 30 FPS video at that level of compression it would consume about 1.2 GB per minute of video (assuming an average 700 KB per jpg frame).

Many motion-video codecs, even non-lossy ones, can save considerable size by only storing frame-to-frame differences (except for the key frames). Some of the lossless specialized screen-cam codecs can squeeze video really tiny because most "software instructional demo" type uses of such products do not have many pixels change on each frame. But real-world videos have most or all pixels change on each frame, at least a little bit, just from random noise in the sensor even if recording a video of a motionless subject. So good quality compression is more problematic on real world video.

[MattCary]

My philosophy: Hold 'em or catch them napping!

That kitten of yours is cute though!

[Guest J.D. Skull]

I've never had any problems shootimg cats. I've had my best luck with a S&W Mdl. 66 with 4" barrel useing 38 spl. semi-wadcutters at 850 fps. And the car works good when you spot one in the road.