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Photographing Wood mice To photograph these mice I have a large glass tank 4ft long 2ft wide and 2ft high in this I place my setup plus a water and food source. These mice can jump very well so care needs to be taken once the mice are in the tank; I have a hardboard top I place on the tank. I have mouse boxes placed on various posts around my garden and when I fetched one of the box’s and placed it in the tank I found it had 6 mice in it. I leave them in the box and let them come out as they want this is handy because when finished I start clearing the tank and all the mice go back in the box which can then be put back on its post. The glass on the front of the tank has to be cleaned very well as you will be shooting through this. To stop reflections I use some matt black art paper fixed to my lens hood this is about 18in square. To light the mice I use 2 Digit light flash panels placed either side of the tank I set the power to give me f16 for good depth of field, the good thing about the panels is that they also have a modeling light so I can use my 100mm macro on auto focus. I have to adjust the exposure sometimes depending where the mice are in the tank this can be done quite easily by adjusting the power switch on the back of the panels. These mice are more active at night and I found 11 to 1 O’clock about the best time and once they were out they did not seem to mind the lights being on. They do come out in the day sometimes but you can sit and wait for hours. Also when they are placed in the tank to start with they do tend to come out and explore there new surroundings and this is another good time to get some shots.
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