[digitalfailure]

As some people will know, I was lucky enough to be able to take the step up to the 20D a wee while ago, but things conspired against me. So it's taken a while to be able to get some serious time behind it.

I went to Chester Zoo on good friday, the weather wasn't all i'd have wished for, and some of the animals were less than social and chose to stay indoors or just stay out of sight.

I went armed with 2 lenses, they being a 17-40 L and a 75-300 IS and 2.5 Gb of Cf space, Upon arrival I noticed that most of the enclosures now had yet another safety fence around them. This meant another 1.5m between me and the subject so the 17-40 was consigned to the bag for the day.

These images have had nothing other than a border and © and a resize, I may at somepoint go into photoshop and have a play with them. But I thought it would serve well to show what the detail is like straight from the card.

Comments would be welcomed, as I feel most of the images show the animal, but they don't really have an element of drama. Maybe thats because they aren't in the natural enviroment.



Taken at 300mm focused through the fencing.



These little Marmots are great fun to watch, they were about the only animal I could have got close enough to use the 17-40 on without getting all the messy fencing and suchlikes in the shot.



Californian sealion lapping up a break in the clouds.



I watched this little fellow for a while
The keepers hide sticky treats inside the length of hose to encourage the use of tools, he was sat there for a fair while poking his stick inside it and drawing out his prize.



When I saw these zebra I thought of one thing......BARCODE :lol: wonder what sort of price they'd be in the supermarket.


Hope you like the images.

[CT]

Nice shots. I like the lion and zebra shots particularly. I think both could be made a little punchier in PS - a tad more contrast perhaps? Zoo animals are usually bored senseless which doesn't help to get much drama in your shots usually.

[Matty]

Nice shots there(finally) Brian, seems you posted this shot in the wrong thread though,



should have been in the self portraits thread....

/Guffaws off into the mist

[digitalfailure]

CT

I agree that they could be made much more vibrant if the levels were tweaked, i'm currently using my laptop though because i still havent got round to setting CS up on my main machine since i added a second HDD and reinstalled windows. The screen doesn't really have the range to have a proper play.

Maybe one day i'll get round to it :lol:

The lion shot was surprising to say the least, I didn't think i'd be able to get a good focus on him due to the steel mesh fencing, The tigers were behind similar mesh and they all showed servier blurring when viewed off camera.

I think the zebra shot would be nice if the fence was removed too, but thats for another day :lol:

[MyPix]

as mentioned, a quick sesion in PS would bring em out a little more, but on the whole i like em a lot,
infact they are very similar to a few i took last year at Chessington , all took through wire or glass










MyPix

[CT]

The colour balance in the lion pic is so far out it's nutz.

The very quickest tweak makes it look far more natural. All I've done is used the default 'daylight'colour balance setting in PSP



Honest mate - I'm just trying to be helpful. :wink:

[CT]

double post

[MyPix]

Thanks CT, no offence taken at all,

one thing tho, the loin pic was autoballanced in photoshop cs to start with ?????

so you have reversed what it did for me in the begining , lol

MyPix :roll:

[CT]

Originally Posted by MyPix

Thanks CT, no offence taken at all,

one thing tho, the loin pic was autoballanced in photoshop cs to start with ?????

so you have reversed what it did for me in the begining , lol

MyPix :roll:

I'd just be wary of any utility which attempts to make all the decisions for you. I'd imagine for a 'one shot' process to get it right the white balance setting in the camera would have to be pretty well spot on, as that's probably used for a point of reference. The reliability of the 'Auto' setting for WB varies from camera to camera, but you're usually better off setting it manually. There are huge advantages in shooting in RAW format if you really want to control the final appearance of your shots.