Rodney Campbell's Blog

Literally…

I had an overnight stay at Taronga Zoo last night (as part of a school excursion). One of the activities we had was a late night zoo safari where we walk around the zoo in the dark. Since many of the animals are sleeping or are nocturnal we can’t have any lights, nor are we allowed to use flash photography because it can blind the animals. So the guides carry these red (almost look like IR) torches which emit a relatively weak red glow. Photography in almost absolute darkness is interesting to say the least but I took my camera and new 85/1.8G along just in case.

At the Tiger enclosure there were two tigers lying in the bamboo very very (less than 30cm) from the glass so when the kids walked up in the dark and started peering through the glass panels into the pitch black enclosure to see if they could find any animals they got quite a surprise when the red glow started to make out these two tigers only a foot away from their faces.

Here I’ve just about tested out the limits of my D7000 with this shot at ISO 6400 1/60th sec @ f/1.8. I had the lens hood hard up against the glass and our guide was kind enough to angle their red light closely towards the tiger to give me as much light as possible. The colouring and crop here is straight out of camera with just a few minor post processing adjustments.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

Red Tiger

NIKON D7000 + 85.0 mm f/1.8 @ 85 mm, 1/60 sec at f/1.8, ISO 6400

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