Zoo trip

[Alan92RTTT]

I have not posted in a while photography had to take a back seat to life.

I went to the zoo a few weeks ago to play with my new 70-300 lens.

C&C but please be nice about it. My vision had been out of wack because of some medical issues and I had to rely on autofocus.

More here Detroit Zoo - 4/8/11

 

[Postman158]

1 and 2 are my favorites. 1 more so, because it seems more candid for the tiger. I think number 2 would have been a lot better if his feet were in the picture, so you could better see what looks like his movement towards the camera.

 

[Alan92RTTT]

2 is a crop from

 

[ulrichsd]

I like it better uncropped imo

 

[zadelstein]

I love the uncropped version. Looks more natural IMO

 

[ulrichsd]

I also have the 70-300mm lens, and I've had mixed feelings on my results.

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but I feel like I don't get the same color contrast/pop that I get out of some of my other lenses. I know its maybe not fair to compare this lens to a fast prime, but are there any suggestions from anyone on how to get the most out of this lens?

Picture #3 kind of reminds me of this in terms of duller contrast. Even the blue of the bird and the orange in the tiger don't seem to be as vibrant as they could be. I can boost this in pp, but is there a trick in camera? Change of white balance settings to shade or something?

OP, did you do any other pp besides cropping? I'm curious as to your take on this.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Alan92RTTT]

It was a dark cloud day so all the pics were a bit muted. I tweaked them a bit on my PC.

I got some great shots from the 70-300 taking pics of a friends car. I started with the stock 18-55 and could not get a good pic without flash. I switched to the 70-300 just for fun and it brought in much more light.

If you don't want to shoot raw and tweak the setting on your computer you could bump the exposure a notch or two and maybe set the color saturation to vivid.

 

[Compaq]

I also have the 70-300mm lens, and I've had mixed feelings on my results.

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but I feel like I don't get the same color contrast/pop that I get out of some of my other lenses. I know its maybe not fair to compare this lens to a fast prime, but are there any suggestions from anyone on how to get the most out of this lens?

Picture #3 kind of reminds me of this in terms of duller contrast. Even the blue of the bird and the orange in the tiger don't seem to be as vibrant as they could be. I can boost this in pp, but is there a trick in camera? Change of white balance settings to shade or something?

OP, did you do any other pp besides cropping? I'm curious as to your take on this.

Thanks,
Scott

You can boost the contrast and saturation in the camera. If you're using Canon, there's a menu, "picture style" I think it is called, that lets you change some of the post processing the camera does on the jeypeggs. I'm sure Nikon offers the same thing, but I don't know how that works. Hope that helps.
Keep in mind though, that if contrast is high, shots with much black and white will come out wrong: black is really black and white is really white. I had to experience that the hard way.

The uncropped version is better imo, but it seems a bit out of focus to me.

 

[lyonsroar]

They all look underexposed to me.

Also several of them have a strange green color cast. WB issue maybe?

The uncropped version of the Tiger is the best one IMO.