Been to the Zoo...again

[StuartR]

Went to the local Zoo today (Colchester) only took 120 photographs so I'll be processing for the rest of the week

Thought I'd post a few that I picked out on my first run through. Still getting to grips with the 40D but beginning to really enjoy using it. It doesn't seem so big anymore (compared to my 350D) and I'm starting to change settings without thinking now - love the exposure adjustment using the big wheel - hate the fact that it stays set even if you switch the camera off and on again - must see if there''s a custom function to fix that. The shots were all processed from jpgs in "faithful" mode - I shot RAW as well but I'll save them for when my RAW processing software is updated - hope it won't be too long a wait.

Anyway, here's a barn owl and the guy flying it in the display this afternoon - my personal favourite this one, taken hand-held @ 300mm and I guess at a range 40' or so. Followed by a few more conventional Zoo shots:





Behind glass this one, covered in sticky kid's fingerprints. I find using a deep rubber lens hood on my lens allows me to press against the glass to exclude glare and reflections. All shots taken using a Canon 70-300mm IS lens. I find the out-of-focus background on this shot a little distracting?





Again taken from behind glass - would have liked a little more catch-light in the eyes and the odd crop is to exclude man-made props & background.





Down, a bit, left a bit - aahhh, that's got it!

[Caz]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

A beautiful set Stuart - will look forward to seeing some of the others.

I think my favourite shot is of the parrots - would be good for the current competition if you haven't already entered!

The detail on the crane (?) is excellent - I can see what you mean about the background though - is that an out of focus twig?

The lion looks very relaxed, and despite the fact that you say most of these were taken through glass, I've really enjoyed looking at them.

[StuartR]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

A beautiful set Stuart - will look forward to seeing some of the others.

I think my favourite shot is of the parrots - would be good for the current competition if you haven't already entered!

The detail on the crane (?) is excellent - I can see what you mean about the background though - is that an out of focus twig?

The lion looks very relaxed, and despite the fact that you say most of these were taken through glass, I've really enjoyed looking at them.

Mmmm - good idea about the competition, think I'll do just that!

Mind you, I shot a couple more "two of a kinds":


Sleeping beauties!





And 2 old deers (sorry): (Shot directly into the light so I'm surprised this one actually came out, I did underexpose by a stop I think).

[Pops]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

A huge hunk of the Ahhhhh factor goes with the deers. I love it

[Jocelyn Walker]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Stuart, thanks for sharing these lovely pics with us, they are great! I'm looking forward to seeing more. The colours are very natural & clarity excellent. My favourite is the parrots, with such relaxed & natural composition. A close 2nd is the crane! What size do you use when downloading your pics & what post processing have you used apart from cropping to rid man made props etc?

[StuartR]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Stuart, thanks for sharing these lovely pics with us, they are great! I'm looking forward to seeing more. The colours are very natural & clarity excellent. My favourite is the parrots, with such relaxed & natural composition. A close 2nd is the crane! What size do you use when downloading your pics & what post processing have you used apart from cropping to rid man made props etc?

Hi Jocelyn, glad you liked them.

In terms of my methods, the first thing I should reiterate is there's a fair bit of cropping which is one of the downsides of shooting in Zoos, you have to be lucky or patient (or both!) to get many of the animals in a natural looking setting. Sometimes it's impossible and the parrot shot, for example, is about 50% of the frame. In fact, I think the owl shot is the only one that's full frame.

I'm working with jpgs at the moment (I would normally use RAW but I'm not at the moment for the reasons stated earlier) and these pictures were shot using the "faithful" setting, which I take to mean no in-camera processing. They appear very dull & flat at first. On my first 40D post I shot some landscapes and flower pictures using the "landscape" setting which obviously included some subtle colour adjustment with a level of sharpening and these jpgs were pretty good straight out of the camera. Still, unless you play with all the settings and options, you'll never learn! I've even been reduced to reading the manual

I used CS2 and for these shots I've manually adjusted the levels, used the shadows / highlight option where needed, boosted saturation by up to 20% (!), adjusted contrast using curves and finally applied sharpening, using smart sharpening, with the (to me) ludicrously high setting of 150% @ 1.3 pixel radius*.

That's about it I think, except on the lion shot, where I blurred the background slightly more than it was. I didn't want to spend too long processing these because I will probably go through them again when DxO has been updated to handle the 40D.

* I say ludicrously high because if I process RAW files taken using my 350D and this lens via DxO then I don't need to apply any sharpening in CS2 - If I do it delivers no improvement in perceived sharpness at all.

[StuartR]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Forgot to answer you question about size.

I normally go for 800 pixels wide on landscape shots and 520-640 pixels wide on portrait shots but have been known to go larger. Unfortunately the impact of a 640 pixel wide portrait image is often markedly less than when looking at the same image at, say, 1024 pixels. Bigger is better in my book.

I use CS2's "save for web" option at a 80-100% quality setting but I'm probably trying Ian's patience with some of my images being in the 460 - 500K range . I promise to save at a lower quality setting in the future Ian - I'm going to have to, I'm running out of gallery space!

[Caz]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Doh! the deer are gorgeous...

And I've never seen rhino like that - even in the wild. Once again, well composed and captured.

[StuartR]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Doh! the deer are gorgeous...

And I've never seen rhino like that - even in the wild. Once again, well composed and captured.

The two in the picture above seemed to be nuzzling one-another which was behaviour I didn't expect to see, I didn't have rhino down as a particularly affectionate animal! They were the middle 2 in a group of 4 all zonked out together in the corner of their paddock which they share with giraffes, ostrich, zebra & kudu.

[jojo]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

Stuart, you couldn't have staged this if you'd tried - I'd be on to Clinton's Cards in a shot (pardon the pun) if I were you - great capture

Jo

[fluffy penguin]

Re: Been to the Zoo...again

I enjoyed them, thank you


loved the lion and the candid shot of the parrots.


will try and remember your comment about taking photos through glass