Zürich Zoo
in Photography , Sunday, November 13, 2005
Finally got around to visiting Zürich Zoo today. I'm not totally sure if I approve of zoos. The good ones do a very good conservation and education work, although it would be disingenuous to pretend that their main role is not entertainment. Zürich Zoo has good points and bad points as far as animal welfare is concerned. We saw some pretty depressed looking king penguins, who most certainly do not have sufficient swimming space. Places like the Genova Aquarium are much better in this regard. Large mammals such as elephants seem too crowded together. However, some of the habitats, like the one for the red pandas, seem quite good.
Zoos are undeniably a good place to practice wildlife photography. However today was challenging. Overcast and foggy, and late afternoon light, made conditions quite difficult. This photo was taken using the Olympus E-1 and the 50-200mm lens, wide open (f2.9), at 800 ISO and semi-supported by a monopod. Although you can't really judge here, it rather belies the accepted knowledge that the E-1 isn't much good at 800 ISO. Here, I've applied light noise reduction (colour noise in CaptureOne, luminance noise in Noise Ninja), and used PhotoKit Sharpener's Creative Sharpener to recover some detail in the panda's face (the photo was not perfectly sharp, but since I was at 1/90sec, semi hand-held, that is hardly surprising).
I do sometimes wonder how it would be to have a top end Canon, or even a Leica R9 digital, but then again, both are far heavier and bulkier that the E-1, and I'm not so sure that their best respective lenses are that much better than the mid range E-System ones.
Zoos are undeniably a good place to practice wildlife photography. However today was challenging. Overcast and foggy, and late afternoon light, made conditions quite difficult. This photo was taken using the Olympus E-1 and the 50-200mm lens, wide open (f2.9), at 800 ISO and semi-supported by a monopod. Although you can't really judge here, it rather belies the accepted knowledge that the E-1 isn't much good at 800 ISO. Here, I've applied light noise reduction (colour noise in CaptureOne, luminance noise in Noise Ninja), and used PhotoKit Sharpener's Creative Sharpener to recover some detail in the panda's face (the photo was not perfectly sharp, but since I was at 1/90sec, semi hand-held, that is hardly surprising).
I do sometimes wonder how it would be to have a top end Canon, or even a Leica R9 digital, but then again, both are far heavier and bulkier that the E-1, and I'm not so sure that their best respective lenses are that much better than the mid range E-System ones.
