Twycross Zoo - Portfolio attempts

I went to Twycross zoo on Sunday and as mentioned in a previous blog I wanted to try and focus on getting some final shots for my portfolio. I went with the aim of doing close up work (well as close as I could with the lens and the obvious restrictions of the animal cages / boundaries. As mentioned in the earlier blog I took with me the following equipment.

• Canon 400d SLR camera
• Canon 100 - 400 zoom lens
• Monopod
• Spare battery

I then went about trying to get the best positions I could for taking pictures with each animal. Now the monopod was a great help during the day as was helpful to steady the camera with the large lens when using slower shutter speeds and easier to change positions when the animals moved that the tripod would have been.

With a lot of the photos I was taking I used a large aperture (f5.6 at 400mm) as wanted to focus mainly on the animals eyes / face and blur out backgrounds by using a shallow depth of field. Also with a lot of animals behind fences / cages I needed the shallow depth of field to help take this obstruction out of the pictures. The best way for this is to stand and get the lens as near to the fence / cage as possible and make sure the target animal is a few meters back from this too.

As it was quite an overcast day I was going to use ISO 400 for the shots, however as I knew these would be for my portfolio and wanted to reduce any light noise I decided to use ISO 200. This however did mean that I would have to lower the shutter speed to 1/80 and even 1/60 but in these cases I had the monopod to help steady the camera. On the few occasions the sun did come out I did sometimes end up with shutter speeds of 1/320 so this was easier for handheld shots.

Another issue I had come across before when taking pictures at the zoo is when the animals are behind glass you get reflections and focusing is harder. Luckily the lens has a lens hood which if you hold it up to the glass takes all reflection away.

All in all I am happy with a lot of the pictures I have taken and the fact I am getting quicker to adjust the camera to the changing conditions throughout the day. The picture of the Leopard is one I want to use in my final portfolio as I wanted to capture a similar image of the ........... taken by Frans Lanting.

To see all images click here