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Went out to Featherdale Wildlife Park today, and got a couple that I was satisfied with, more or less.

The 2nd and 3rd were tough to get because they were behind mesh - very challenging shooting conditions! You have to get your lens as close to the wire as possible, open up your aperture (unfortunately you lose DOF doing this) and try to make sure there is a good bit of distance between the bird and both you and the background...

losfp
Featherdale is a great venue for photography. Shooting birds through wire is not a satisfactory way to get pics, but sometimes it's the only way. I wish the managers of these places would install glass shooting ports or some other device that would alow us to get clear shots.

I can see the problems with #2,3, the first is tack sharp and a great shot of ol' kooka.

Yes, you have to slam the lens right against the cage.

The one things that bothers me about those three shots is the missing eyes. Unless there is some favourable low sunlight striking the birds you have to use a bit of dialled down flash to put a bit of sparkle in the eyes.

I found (usually in hindsight) that the trick with zoo photography is to chase the light, not the cute animals.

Cheers
Steffen

I like the colours in the third image and the sharpness in the first. I find the second a bit soft.

Steffen wrote:
The one things that bothers me about those three shots is the missing eyes. Unless there is some favourable low sunlight striking the birds you have to use a bit of dialled down flash to put a bit of sparkle in the eyes.

I found (usually in hindsight) that the trick with zoo photography is to chase the light, not the cute animals.

Yep - agree about the eyes. Trouble is there was a tradeoff between having the catchlights from the flash, vs having better contrast shooting without the flash through the mesh... Looking at my shots, I got the better, sharper shots without flash, so decided to use those ones.... Now if they were only in the open...