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G'day all,
Well, I'd planned a big day and all I made it to was the Melbourne Zoo... So much for getting up early for some sunrise stuff after a late night, now buggered so there goes the sunset stuff too... Rats!!!

Ah well, any way the Zoo was fun, got a couple of interesting shots of the Lions... A couple of Rosella(?) shots seem to be clipping the red channel maybe??? That's with no saturation in PP, wow... I assume just bright light did it???

Critique/advice or just sticky nose, I'm easy...

http://www.pixspot.com./thumbnails.php?album=123

Cheers,
Mudder[/url]

mudder - the shot of the lion yawning is classic and well caught. The pic of the colourful parrot could perhaps do with a little desaturation or you could try levels in the red channel.

Overall a nice collection of pics and well worth the visit to the zoo.

Chris

sirhc55 wrote:... The pic of the colourful parrot could perhaps do with a little desaturation or you could try levels in the red channel...

Thanks for the tip, I always seem to forget something... Shoulda thought of that, thanks...

Cheers,
Mudder

good pics of the lion yawning. colour seems to be a bit off with the koalas.

did u visit the elelphant area?...its fantastic being able to see them in their natural environs. I was at the zoo 2 weeks ago at twilight.

Great pics mate.

I love the koala's But then i'm biased.

Love the shots of the lion, was that the 80-400VR? there's no EXIF information in any of the shots that I can see..

some good shots Mudder, how much does it cost to go to the zoo nowdays?
did you you set the wb to sunny on the koalas.

Red;

I know mudder, nicole and I are all FOTZ members ( Friend's of the Zoo ) costs about $80 a year then entry is free to the zoo and healesville and I think you get discounted entry to werribee as well as well as free entry into other zoos around the country..

Otherwise I think entry is about $20.. roughly..

genji wrote:...colour seems to be a bit off with the koalas...

The Koalas were under a shade cloth tht was a tan/brownie/sandy sort of color, so I assume the color cast is from that... I should have noticed, I'll check it out tonight and have a play, thanks for mentioning...

PlatinumWeaver wrote:Love the shots of the lion, was that the 80-400VR? there's no EXIF information in any of the shots that I can see..

Yep, 80-400VR. I've just graduated to PhotoShopCS and am using "save for web" and I seem to be losing the EXIF info, I'll see if that's a configurable aspect in settings somewhere, cos it's annoying to lose it...

redline wrote:...how much does it cost to go to the zoo nowdays? did you you set the wb to sunny on the koalas.

Yep I think it's $19.50 for adults, but as PlatinumWeaver mentioned the FOTZ membership (@$80 per adult) is well worth it for animal nuts or photographers... I'd go to the Zoo's at least once a month... Yep, set to Sunny WB (-3) but I always shoot raw, then again just thinking about it now I just used Nikon Capture to translate from RAW to TIFF for PP and the RAW settings were "as shot" so I assume the sunny WB (with -3) as set by the cam was used when translating to TIFF...

Cheers,
Mudder

mudder - don’t use save for web it will strip EXIF - use save as and then JPEG - all EXIF will be retained.

Chris

I've noticed that Photoshop's save as Jpeg tends to make awfully large files more often than not.. not so much an issue for home use, but if you're uploading them to a web gallery it can be a pain..

If i'm going to upload a jpeg I tend to save it in photoshop, then open in paint shop pro and resave it using PSP's optimiser system.. all the EXIF data is still there but the file size is a -lot- smaller..

PlatinumWeaver wrote:I've noticed that Photoshop's save as Jpeg tends to make awfully large files more often than not.. not so much an issue for home use, but if you're uploading them to a web gallery it can be a pain..

If i'm going to upload a jpeg I tend to save it in photoshop, then open in paint shop pro and resave it using PSP's optimiser system.. all the EXIF data is still there but the file size is a -lot- smaller..

When you do a save as JPEG the first step should be to resize the image. Drop it down from 240dpi to either 72dpi or 100dpi (do not resize dimensions at this time) this will drop a 17Mb TIF to around 1.5Mb. Then if you wish to go further reduce dimensions to get a file size of around 1Mb. Then save as JPEG (I use high for a file size varying from 200kb to 400kb

Chris

Hi Mudder. Looks like you had a good trip to the zoo. The first bird I think is a Red-winged Parrot. Still not sure about the second. Have to check the book later. Did you use any flash on the big grey heron? I still need more practice with the flash myself. The last koala is my favourite . I might try a tighter crop though...maybe even a portrait? Not sure...

Looks like you had fun! Definitely worth getting a FOTZ membership if you're an animal nut.

G'day,
Nicole, yep I used the SB800 for the Heron, trying it out and playing with some setting to try and get the hang of it... It's hard to get a good even exposure in there, it tends to allow streams of light in through breaks in branches overhead which results in blown highlights and dark foregrounds on the birds, so I was trying to get some form of fill-in flash going... Well at least I have trouble in there anyway...

Others recommending the save as, I tried doing a save as while editing a TIFF file (just then to confirm) and the only save as options I have are:
PhotoShop *.psd
PhotoShop RAW *.RAW
Cineon *.cin
photoshop *.pdf
png *.png
TIFF *.tiff

I usually resize before saving for web but I don't seem to get an option to save as jpeg when saving from a tiff file... WTF??? What am I screwing up?

Cheers,
Mudder