Camera settings for pet photography.

Want to capture your furry friend in all their cuteness? Here are the best camera settings for pet photography.

Choose the best camera settings.

Pets aren’t always the easiest subjects to photograph. No matter how many times you ask them to look at the camera, in the end, they’re going to do whatever they want to do.

To be ready for whatever your dog, cat, or any other kind of animal might do, use these camera settings for pet photography:

• A wide aperture — To make your furry friend look their best, shoot with a wide aperture (low f-stop). That’ll give you a shallow depth of field to blur the background while keeping your pet sharp and in focus.
• A fast shutter speed — Pets are unpredictable and like to move around. Use a fast shutter speed at least two times faster than your lens’s focal length to keep images sharp regardless of movement. For example, if you’re using a 50mm lens, set your shutter speed to at least 1/100ths of a second. It never hurts to add a few hundredths of a second, just in case.
• A low ISO — Reduce image noise by using a low ISO. The closer to 100 you can get, the better. If you’re shooting in low light, you might need to increase ISO to maintain a fast shutter speed.

Use photo editing software.

Because pets are challenging to shoot, images often don’t come out exactly the way you hoped they would. That’s why it’s important to use photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop to process your photos to perfection.

With photo editing software, you can crop, remove blur, and adjust elements like color, exposure, and contrast to transform images of even the most stubborn pup or cat into a photo you’ll love to look at for years to come.

Want more photography tips? Discover what more you can do with Lightroom and Photoshop to create adorable images of your pet.