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I took my girls to Taronga Zoo here in Sydney on Sunday (yes the day with torrential rain and extremely dark overcast conditions!).

Unfortunately we didn't have a great deal of choice in the timing - my girls "really!" wanted to go to the zoo and we've a visitor staying with us and they're leaving soon.

We were reasonably lucky in that it didn't rain heavily for much of the time we were there however the conditions were extremely overcast and it was quite dark as a result. The overcast skies is good (for photography), the dark and rain not so much

It was however a great time to try out the higher ISO capabilities of the D7000 since I wanted a reasonably fast shutter speed to capture the animals and I was sporting a slower long lens (my 70-300mm f4.5-5.6). I also took my 17-50/2.8 but it was a bit too rainy and windy for me to bother switching lenses back and forth so I stuck with the longer lens for the whole day.

I shot mainly in Manual (sometimes in Aperture Priority) and selected my desired Aperture and Shutter Speed and used ISO to provide good exposures.

What follows is some of the better (compositionally) higher ISO images - some of the shots (not posted here) were even taken out to ISO 3600 and even those look reasonably clean and usable.

C&C Welcomed...

Lizard in Blue

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 145 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 1250

Snow Leopard (no not Mac OS X 10.6...)

Snowy Leap

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 165 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 560

Looking at You

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 270 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 1000

and a portrait of my youngest just after having a very nice face painting job done...

Tigress

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 122 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 1600

REally liking #2 as it feels like a decisive moment when it jumps... Nice light and tones there.

#3 Maybe bring out the eyes a little as they seem to be in shadow.

#1 Very good but I keep seeing the leg cut off and get distracted a little.

You have used your new toy to your advantage here. Who needs a 2.8 zoom now? Also you get to walk around the park and not get tired because the lens is too heavy...

Anyhoo..makes me a little jealous being stuck with a noise machine so to speak. Am I sounding a little like fakechuck?

#2 is the winner here, its a good composition with a good pose by the animal. It feels like it needs a bit more contrast and some local brightening around the eyes.

The extra contrast would darken the BG (only enough to make into indiscernable shapes) and focus the attention purely on the face o fthe animal. The brighening of the eyes would really lock in the focus of the viewer imo.

surenj wrote:REally liking #2 as it feels like a decisive moment when it jumps... Nice light and tones there.

#3 Maybe bring out the eyes a little as they seem to be in shadow.

Thanks - done

#1 Very good but I keep seeing the leg cut off and get distracted a little.

Yeah that one was hard - both the reflective glass and I also wanted that tail bluring into the distance.

biggerry wrote:#2 is the winner here, its a good composition with a good pose by the animal. It feels like it needs a bit more contrast and some local brightening around the eyes. The extra contrast would darken the BG (only enough to make into indiscernable shapes) and focus the attention purely on the face o fthe animal. The brighening of the eyes would really lock in the focus of the viewer imo.

Thanks - I did darken (quite a bit) the background to remove the distracting clutter. I also had brightened the eyes a little - I might look at increasing the level. I'll also take a look at the contrast (from memory I had already pumped it a bit but will check).

Remorhaz wrote:

biggerry wrote:#2 is the winner here, its a good composition with a good pose by the animal. It feels like it needs a bit more contrast and some local brightening around the eyes. The extra contrast would darken the BG (only enough to make into indiscernable shapes) and focus the attention purely on the face o fthe animal. The brighening of the eyes would really lock in the focus of the viewer imo.

Thanks - I did darken (quite a bit) the background to remove the distracting clutter. I also had brightened the eyes a little - I might look at increasing the level. I'll also take a look at the contrast (from memory I had already pumped it a bit but will check).

Updated - more contrast and brighter eyes

Remorhaz wrote:Updated - more contrast and brighter eyes

here's what I would have done..

Thanks Gerry - I do like that - I gave mine another shot (reload my updated image posted above). I notice that your version has a lot more "detail" in the fur (and more colour?) which I still didn't get (what did you do )...

Big improvement with the sharpening !
DebT