Shooting at the Zoo?

[tsanchez012]

Okay so yesterday I convinced my husband to go with me to the zoo. I love it there - it's one of my favorite places. Now that I found a new "hobby" I appreciate much more at the zoo than before. My question is regarding shooting at the zoo. Any tips? Many of the photos I took of the animals were obstructed by fencing (of course) but some were not. The first one is of a white bird (peacock?) without a fence:

From zoo

The second one is of a anteater but as you can see the fence is obstructing the good view. I am okay at cloning things out - but not good enough to clone out something like this.. any advice?

From zoo

[GX 1L]

I am still just learning, but here is a shot that I took at the Adastra Zoo in the bahamas. I got fairly close to the fence and kept pressing the shutter 1/2 way to focus over and over until it focused on what I wanted. This was back when I used auto for everything and knew nothing about my camera's manual controls. This was shot with my Canon S3 IS point and shoot.



Photo information
Sep 1, 2007
2112×2816 pixels – 1392KB
Filename: IMG_0374.JPG
Camera: Canon
Model: Canon PowerShot S3 IS
ISO: n/a
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: 3.5
Focal Length: 72mm
Flash Used: No

This one I was able to make the fence pretty much disappear.


Photo information
Sep 1, 2007
2816×2112 pixels – 1761KB
Filename: IMG_0384.JPG
Camera: Canon
Model: Canon PowerShot S3 IS
ISO: n/a
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: 3.5
Focal Length: 62.3mm
Flash Used: No

it looks from the data that the trick was a fairly large aperture for a shallow depth of field.

[jetrim]

Only thing I have found that *mostly* works, is getting the lens right up against the fence so that the focus kinda burns through it. I've also had some VERY LIMITED success taking two photos, the second being down and right several inches from the first and blending them together later to make one complete fence free photo, but this is time consuming and doesn't always work out (like if the animal moves). Make two layers and use the eraser to eliminate the fence from the top layer which *should* show fur from the layer below if you offset your shots far enough.

[Dylan8i]

yeah the trick for shooting through fences is get the camera as close as you can to the fence, and the subject as far away as you can. this puts the focus far away and even fairly large fencing can "disappear" in the photo.

if the animal is right up on the fence there's not much you can do (in camera).