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Just back from a trip to Sabah - Borneo.





Cheers Loacchlover.

Great content, but all the pics look a bit soft. What gear are you using?

I hope you had a great trip loachlover! I was last there in 2001. That was in the first year of me using DSLRs: I'd like to go back now my skills (and my gear) has improved.

methd wrote:Great content, but all the pics look a bit soft. What gear are you using?

A lot of the answers are in the EXIF. Camera was Nikon D80, lens was 70-300mm. If I'm reading it right all shots were taken in P mode.

Orangutan baby: ISO 400, 1/250s, f/5.6. Not bad in terms of sharpness/etc although it could be improved by things like post-processing technique. Also, when you're getting down to the fine details you'll find that most zoom lenses are not at their sharpest wide-open (f/5.6 in this case) at their long end (300mm in this case).

Bear: 1/50s @ 210mm, which explains the motion blur.

Hornbill: 1/2000s, ISO 110, but I suspect that this is a small crop from your original, so any blur and/or focus issues will be exaggerated.
Was this taken along the Kinabatangan River?

Night-Heron: ISO 400, 1/250s, f/5.6. Like the Orangutan picture the basics are there, although the bird could be a bit brighter.

Snake: ISO 320, 1/60s, f/5.6. Flash fired.
With the slow exposure the snake is quite blurred, although the flash has frozen it at the start of the exposure. When I'm doing work like this I use Manual exposure (so that I'm in control of the shutter speed) and use 2nd(rear)-curtain flash sync to get the flashed part at the end of the exposure (which looks more natural).


Shooting in the dark jungle introduces lots of challenges for photography. With your relatively slow (f/5.6 at the long end) lens and limitations of things like high ISO (the highest in these shots was only 400) I'm not surprised that some of these didn't turn out too well. Don't despair though: I had to throw out a lot of my own Borneo shots due to my mistakes!
I think my favourite is the Orangutan, although I'd suggest the image could be improved by slightly darkening the bright walls at the left/bottom. It helps that we can read a lot of story into this image!

P.S. the timestamps on your photos look odd. I find it helpful to reset the clocks in my cameras as I enter each new timezone so when I'm reviewing the photos the time is relevant to the shooting conditions.

I think Dave has given you great feedback here.

#1 has alot of potential I think. The whole things about captivity etc.... Very nice capture...

Nice feedback Dave

The saying, 'an image says a thousand words,' was never more true with that first image. It's perfect and would happily grace National Geographic as an indictment of how we are treating our primate cousins. So sad and emotional....

Thanks for your feedback Dave,my photography does need improving and help from people like you is appreciated.
Some of these pics are from Kinabatangan River and others from a zoo in Kota Kinabalu. All were taken with a 70-300 kit lens,hand held at 300 mostly with no VR. Should have taken a tripod & remote release !!!!!!
Am looking at upgrading to a better lens with VR soon. Taking pics in the jungle is not an easy thing to do with such varying light and no time to make adjustments. The practice was still good.
Thanks for your kind words Killakoala I think it shows her emotions exactly.
Here is a few from Kinabatangan.





Cheers Loachlover.