Oh, to be wild...

[FITCIP]

still getting used to using the new lens and am a bit all over the place with settings at the moment still, but today we had some rather nice weather (almost spring like) ((rolls eyes)) so to my local wildlife park, camera in hand i went!

snapped this little guy from about 40 feet away through the thickest metal diamond pattern fence. very tight holes and 4mm thick wire.

manually focussed to bypass the fence and opened the aperture.

im happy with it, but cant help thinking i could have got better results with more knowledge.

any suggestions or critique to assist, is most welcome.

thanks,
John

[TomH in PA]

Looks good to me. The only advice I can offer is to always focus on the eyes when photographing people or animals. This looks like the eye is slightly soft compared to the neck, which is a little distracting.

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day John

Forty feet away and you can clearly see the whiskers & eyelashes .... and you're not sure about whether it's "good enough"

John ... it's great mate - 10/10

ps- I have recently been looking into some of my old slides for copying to digital. My memories were that these were my 'best' work, back from film days & my 100-300mm super Tamron lens. Well compared with todays sharp images, these slides are fuzzy !!!

Today's optics and all the associated wizardry leaves 25yrs ago stuff looking like horse-and-buggy transport

Enjoy what you've got ... and can you show us some more of your excellent images

Regards, Phil

[FITCIP]

thanks for the advice TomH, was hard at that distance and freehand to get my exact focus point which of course should have been they eye. i will be back there soon enough as i have a membership, so more attention will bring better results lets hope. thanks mate
john

[FITCIP]

As always Phil, one of my most supportive friends on here, and much of what i have learned from you has been put to good use

this was unfortunaltely my best of the day. they have a beautiful pair of Lynx there and some other furry besties i will endevour to photograph next visit.

kind of hard knowing where to post these days now im not using the panasonic so much. fallen in love with my new Nikon, and cant seem to put it down lol

i still dabble on occasion with hdr and post in there as often as i can. and a few POTD wins too that im rather proud of

thanks for your continued support mate,
G'day
John

[lomitamike]

Great shot!
Knowledge comes with experience.

[wave01]

great job looks good to me

[FITCIP]

thank you lomitamike and waves, much appreciated

[FITCIP]

from the same visit to the wildlife park, i snapped this Lynx hiding amongst the trees. quite far away though so cropped a bit, but still nice enough to get a show i thought lol. mainly thought you might like this one Phil. what do you think mate?

worked to get this looking ok. had to sharpen it and pop the cat in topaz bundle. gaussian blur the background but keep the tree that the cat is looking from behind. took a few unatural objects out of the background too, fence, ramp and posts etc. was about 50-60ft away through a chainlink fence. and the lynx was well inside the compound so tried manual focus.


cheers
John

[DigMe]

I could immediately tell before reading that the blur was added in post. The borders of the cat just don't look right. Same for the original picture you posted.. It looks ghosted all around the periphery of his body. It is most pronounced along the top of his snout. Use the longest focal length you can with the widest aperture that you can and you'll get the bokeh in-camera if the animal isn't too close to the background.



brad