Adelaide Mini Meet - Zoo

[Big V]

Had a great day with the guys on thursday, good company, excellent weather and the gorillas were out..






not a macro, these are big enough that the 400 does a good job..

[mudder]

These are terrific, great eye detail, love the one of the bird (heron thing?)... looks like you did a great job with the exposure on the gorilla and the lion too...

[Big V]

Andrew, thanks for that..yes I am really happy with the exposures..these were taken with the 80-400 OS lens and hand held because of a busted thread on the mono pod which I only discovered as I was getting the camera out of the bag and putting it on.. oh well a little machining will fix that. The gorillas were behind glass but we were fortunate enought to be there early morning which allowed for some decent light. The birds were a lot tougher, really was dark in that enclosure and we are talking some pretty slow shutter speeds here at the 300-400 end, so really happy they turned out..

[mudder]

Ahhh, another that bows to their god of VR, the god of Sigma OS

It's great isn't it? With stabilisation at long focal lengths, you get shots you wouldn't get without it I reckon, works well on a monopod too, that's how I use it for animal stuff...

With the glass I usually just plonk the lens hood against the glass using my hand as the "shock absorber" between them and the glass almost disappears with the right WB in PP (shooting raw)... The hardest part about shooting through glass is finding the spot in the glass that doesn't have kids handprints of the remnants of lunch smeared over it etc...

[BBJ]

Tony, you know i was pissed off that i could not be there and looking like wont be at clipsal as my usual camping spot has ppl staying so a bit late to get in somewhere so yeh i like all these pics except for them bloody ugly birds i think they call Egret or something like that. LOL
Love the Gorilla's.

[DanielA]

Great shots.
I think I prefer your other heron pic to the one you showed here.

Daniel

[Finch]

Big V,

First shot of young gorilla and dragonfly are superb. Gorilla is sharp and shows emotion while dragonfly is well composed and sharp as.

Bird is a White-faced Heron, by the way, but is a tad dark. Lion is also cropped too tight, I feel.

Sounds like you guys had a great day at the zoo (wish I was there)

Cheers

Michael

[Big V]

Ok, lets try these then..

[Slider]

Terrific set of shots. Shame I didn't get a chance to catch up when I over there recently. Would loved to have visited that zoo.

[rookie2]

great stuff Big V...crisp and natural ....but wheres the falling leaf

tho my pics ae technically very average I know that conditions werent ideal and that there is so much more to learn.

Thanks for the tips and explanations of the basic things.

I had to go to the doc today to be treated for a torn bicep from picking up Fozzies D2x and VR.

the doc could fix that but said I'd pobably suffer from lenslustophobia for another 10 years (or until the kids have finished school)

cheers
R2

best day of the week = RDO

[Big V]

Rookie, the bicep will get better but nothing can cure the lens lust other than money... Glad you enjoyed the day, they are always a lot of fun and much learning goes on...