Wildlife and Animal advice wanted, please.

mugsandb

mugsandb

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Andy
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I am planning to visit the Cotswold Wildlife Park at the weekend. I will be taking my new Sigma 120-400 lens for its' first outing.

I could do with some tips and advice about settings etc to use so that I can come back with some half-decent photos.

I intend to take my monopod along too.
 
CWP is very tog friendly so you should grab some good shots, if you like the Lemurs 12:00 is the feeding time but if your going on a weekend get in early so you can get to the front :D

I tend to shoot in AV mode and let the camera sort the rest, for shooting through the cages place your lens hood on the cage (or as close as you can get it) so that the lens will look straight through the fence, for the lions lens hood against the glass...

If you go into the hot house leave your lens hood off for a couple of minutes as the lens will aclimatise and the moisture will dissapear of the front of the lens so your not shooting a load of cloudy photo's.

Meerkats, the best angles seem to be the back end of the enclosure (closest to the egg display) as you can get a nice green background from the trees opposite (lowest possible f stop would be handy).

Would always recommend getting there early, the gates open between 9:45 and 10am depending on whose working the gate and queues build up quickly...

Have fnu, it's a great park to visit and the canteen has good food at reasonable prices :D
 
Haven't been to CWP (yet) but recently visited Monkey World in Dorset. Had to go back to the car to get my 70-300 lens as the 18-135 just didn't have the reach.

Also recently visited Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, just outside Bristol, and made the fatal mistake of leaving the 70-300 at home. IDIOT :bang:

Look forward to seeing some of the photos :)
 
Can I join in on this post?
I'm off to South Africa on Sarafi this Friday (sorry, had to just slip that in ;-) )
I've done LOADS of reading and have taken the "gear to take" advice a little too seriously, so have a nice full camera bag (or trunk as the wife calls it).
One thing I've not found is practical advice and tips on how to take good shots of big animals at a distance, so my question is the same as Mugsandb - tips please.
I've got the Sigma 150-500mm f4.5-5.6 lens, got the beanbag & monopod and an open vehicle. I'm expecting to be shooting in relitavely low light as the game drives are sunrise and sunset. What next?

One specific question I can think of is, should I give shutter speed or ISO priority? For example, a running animal or flying bird - assume light permits 1/2000 at f6.3@500mm ISO 1600. Should I drop to ISO 800 1/1000 or stick with the faster shutter and deal with the noise later?

Any info you can offer me or the original poster would be appreciated.

PS - this is my first night on the forum, so "Hello everyone" and please be gentle ;-)
 
Pondlife said:
I'm off to South Africa on Sarafi this Friday (sorry, had to just slip that in ;-) )
I've done LOADS of reading and have taken the "gear to take" advice a little too seriously, so have a nice full camera bag (or trunk as the wife calls it).
One thing I've not found is practical advice and tips on how to take good shots of big animals at a distance, so my question is the same as Mugsandb - tips please.
I've got the Sigma 150-500mm f4.5-5.6 lens, got the beanbag & monopod and an open vehicle. I'm expecting to be shooting in relitavely low light as the game drives are sunrise and sunset. What next?

One specific question I can think of is, should I give shutter speed or ISO priority? For example, a running animal or flying bird - assume light permits 1/2000 at f6.3@500mm ISO 1600. Should I drop to ISO 800 1/1000 or stick with the faster shutter and deal with the noise later?
Click to expand...

Hi, and welcome to TP.

I presume you've got the old, non-OS, version of the Sigma lens (note, lens - not lens). That will make things quite hard, you're going to be having to fight against fairly poor light and long distances. That means you are going to have to bump the ISO to maintain shutter speeds - you can do something to fix noise, there's nothing you can do about blur. How fast a shutter speed depends on many factors - not least is how steady the photographer is. 1/1000s should be plenty fast enough.

Make sure your guide knows to switch the engine off when you stop. Most will without asking, but if they don't then you're more likely to have problems.


Have a good time.
 
shoot manual and chimp

servo AF centre focus point

keep the shutter speed above the focal length unless you have good hands - part of your chimping should be zooming right in to check for blur

general rules of thumb, others will be more specific
 
Thanks for the tips. I have the new OS version of the lens ;) so should have a couple of stops to play with. Combination of monopod and/or beanbag should help keep things steady. I'll make sure shutter gets priority - watch out for my posts in a couple of weeks requesting tips on removing noise!
 
Pondlife said:
Thanks for the tips. I have the new OS version of the lens ;) so should have a couple of stops to play with. Combination of monopod and/or beanbag should help keep things steady. I'll make sure shutter gets priority - watch out for my posts in a couple of weeks requesting tips on removing noise!
Click to expand...

Not seen the new OS version, but I've heard loads of good things about it. Will look forward to seeing some stunning pics. For noise I like the way that Lightroom 3 handles the raw images.
 
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