Photos of black dog - which filter do I need?

Hi,

I am a complete beginner at DSLR photography, and am very excited to soon be buying my first D5200 with a Nikkor 55-200mm VR lens. I will be using this a lot for nature photography, as I love taking my dog out in the forest and taking pictures. So the dog features in many of my pictures. My main problem is that she is completely black, which makes it really difficult to take good pictures of her.

I was hoping that a filter might help me with this, along with the obvous advantages of using a better camera than my current old compact camera. Am I right in thinking that a filter might help? If so, which one? Any other advice would also be much appreciated

Hi and welcome, You will need to under expose your image by -1exp or -2exp depending on where you are. Your camera will try and over expose the photo as it thinks its dark (black dog).

I have on occasion used a flash for black dogs with flash compensation. Remember to always focus on the eyes.

Think like this: it's a problem of contrast (opposed to black, most of the environments (backgrounds/foregrounds) like the sky, water, snow...tend to be too bright). Using a polarizer, in SOME situations you could make certain (parts of the) environments look darker than they really are. If you would shoot the black'n'whites, you could use the yellow or red filters, in order to darken the blue color of the sky/sea water, provided that the dog is "set" against them... Generally, avoid the hard light, unless the position of the dog is such that it suits the purpose (accentuates the dog's features). Also, use the flash in a so-called "fill light" mode, and with the diffuser, to soften the shadows and to darken the background, thus to make a dog look brighter... Take care of the distance - the pitch-black dog will look like nothing but a black dot if it is too far from you (and you're shooting with the standard or a wide angle lens) - rather try to compose in such manner that the dog is closer to you (e.g. a close-up, whereas the dog takes the most of the plane just in front of the lens)...