peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
Olympus America invited a bunch of journalists to join them for a day of shooting at the Bronx Zoo last week, and it ended up being a very pleasant day of playing around with their gear. They brought pro photographer John Isaac -- very, very nice guy with a book on Kashmir coming out this fall that looks excellent from the sampling of images he showed us. They also had lots of big lenses -- 300/2.8s and 90-250/2.8s -- for us to use.
I'm not a big fan of zoos, or wildlife images shot at the zoo, but here's a handful of pictures just for grins. All were shot RAW and converted with Adobe Camera Raw.
First is an examination of the 90-250/2.8. Normally, I would never shoot with the equivalent of 500mm without a heavy tripod, but I didn't have one. So this was shot with an E-500 on a monopod at 1/1000th of a second, the lens racked out to 250mm, and wide open (i.e. f/2.8). Be guided accordingly. But I'm definitely in the camp that thinks this is a pretty terrific wildlife lens (the zoo's chief photographer, who tagged along with us, loved it.)
Here's a cropped, downsized, tweaked version of the same shot.
Here's the big male gorilla. He was amazing, at one point standing up at the glass that separates him from the people and beating his chest to make sure we all knew who was boss. (We knew.) This was shot through plexiglass (reflections ruined many other shots) with an E-500, a 50-200mm at 200mm and f/3.5, 1/125th of a second, ISO 400.
Here's a monkey (a spider monkey maybe?) shot through plexiglass again with an E-500, the 50-200mm at 108mm and f/2.9 (wide open), 1/200th of a second, ISO 160.
And lastly, a peacock, not a great shot, but included because it was also done with the 90-250/2.8 wide open, in this case at 158mm, 1/200th of a second, ISO 100. The original is not perfectly sharp at full size (the monopod is the culprit there).
I'm not a big fan of zoos, or wildlife images shot at the zoo, but here's a handful of pictures just for grins. All were shot RAW and converted with Adobe Camera Raw.
First is an examination of the 90-250/2.8. Normally, I would never shoot with the equivalent of 500mm without a heavy tripod, but I didn't have one. So this was shot with an E-500 on a monopod at 1/1000th of a second, the lens racked out to 250mm, and wide open (i.e. f/2.8). Be guided accordingly. But I'm definitely in the camp that thinks this is a pretty terrific wildlife lens (the zoo's chief photographer, who tagged along with us, loved it.)
Here's a cropped, downsized, tweaked version of the same shot.
Here's the big male gorilla. He was amazing, at one point standing up at the glass that separates him from the people and beating his chest to make sure we all knew who was boss. (We knew.) This was shot through plexiglass (reflections ruined many other shots) with an E-500, a 50-200mm at 200mm and f/3.5, 1/125th of a second, ISO 400.
Here's a monkey (a spider monkey maybe?) shot through plexiglass again with an E-500, the 50-200mm at 108mm and f/2.9 (wide open), 1/200th of a second, ISO 160.
And lastly, a peacock, not a great shot, but included because it was also done with the 90-250/2.8 wide open, in this case at 158mm, 1/200th of a second, ISO 100. The original is not perfectly sharp at full size (the monopod is the culprit there).
