Megan with Paws and Claws Photography. The next issue that I want to talk to you about is equipment. Almost any camera you have will be satisfactory, but I recommend if possible that use a camera on which you control the lenses, which is also known as the aperture, the shutter speed, and the focus. Possibly, you have an automatic camera that controls some of these functions for you. On many cameras you can overwrite the automatic features by shooting in the manual mode. This will give you the greatest possible creative freedom. The camera that I prefer to use is a digital single-lens reflex, which is also known as a DSLR. This camera allows me to change lenses when needed. Some of the lenses are fixed, these are called portrait lenses. For example, this is a portrait lens that I have here. These are called fixed focus lenses. They will give you a sharper image with less distortion, whereas other lenses can be used in other situations where there isnt enough room to back off the subject. For instance, when you get in too close and you're shooting in a downward motion towards your animal, you tend to get what I like to call the big dog nose effect. This is where the nose on your animal looks huge, and the actual head on your animal looks really small. Now, automatic cameras try to get everything in focus, whereas you may want the background to be out of focus. To blur the background on my camera, I set my aperture at 5.

6. If you want a sharper background and you want the background to be in focus, I use an aperture of f/11.