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Must-Known Tips for Successful Zoo Photographs

Must-Known Tips for Successful Zoo Photographs

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Must-Known Tips for Successful Zoo Photographs www.sleeklens.com

If you ever wanted to go on a safari to take spectacular images of wild lions or elephants, but you don’t have the money to do so, you always have the possibility to go to the next zoo to encounter those wild animals. Besides, taking images in the Zoo is a good way to practice your photography. The main difference between shooting animals in the zoo and shooting animals in the wild is that the animals can’t run away in the zoo and that makes everything much easier. But there are also some points you have to consider and things to prepare before you enter the zoo.

Table of Contents

Blend out the Fence

Shooting animals through a fence can be really challenging because mostly all animals in the zoo are caged, that means that you have to deal with the fence which is between you and the animal, but there are some tricks to blend the fence out. First of all make sure you position yourself and your camera really close to the fence, then turn your lens to manual focus, because your autofocus might be irritated by the fence and it might happen that your lens has problems focusing the animal. If the fence has some wide gaps, then try to position yourself to shoot through those gaps. Furthermore using an open aperture will also help you to blend out the fence.

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/80, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Be on eye level

Get at the same level as the animal to create an interesting and eye-catching perspective. Being at eye level with the animals allows the viewer to get in their fascinating world. Furthermore be sure to be familiar with several image composition rules in order to show eye catching images, there are some guidelines which may be useful if you want to achieve a well-composed image.

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/200, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Be patient and wait for the right moment

Taking images of animals always requires a great amount of patience and time, because you never can predict when the animal is coming near to you or if it will be around at all. So before you go to the zoo to photograph animals, you have to be aware that it might take some hours to get an excellent shot and I personally recommend revisiting the zoo for a couple of times, to have a higher chance to get good images. Same counts with wildlife photography, the more time you spend with an animal, the higher the chances are to have better images in the end. The animals decide by their own where they want to go. Nature is unpredictable as we know.

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/2000, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Don’t use your flashlight

Flashlight can be harmful to some animals, so please always turn it off while you are taking images of animals in the zoo. Furthermore, you will achieve much better results if you photograph animals in natural light conditions.

Eliminate backgrounds with an open aperture

Wide aperture lenses are helpful if you want to isolate your main subject from everything else, for blurring the background and if you want to get a smooth and clear background. So choose a wide aperture lens for a soft and clean background. Furthermore, in some areas of the zoo you need a lot of light, so a lens which has an open aperture will just be the right choice for a trip in the zoo.

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/160, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Gear

I would recommend to bring along a telephoto lens if you want to capture animals in the zoo. Some zoo animals are more far away and some others are near to the fence, so using a 50mm prime lens can also be really beneficial. Generally speaking, a telephoto zoom lens would be the best lens to use for animals in a zoo. With a zoom, lens you have the possibility to easily zoom in and out depending on the situation and on the focal length you need. Furthermore If you choose a tele zoom lens you will just become more flexible. You will be less flexible while using a prime lens, but prime lenses are generally faster, lighter and more compact. Besides, choose a lens with an image stabiliser, because in a zoo you will mainly use your camera handheld and an image stabilizer will help to produce shake-free images. Camera shake can cause blurry images and almost nothing will ruin an image more than being blurry and unsharp. Trust me, your images will just gain more quality if you use a lens which has an inbuilt image stabilizer. But always make sure to turn off the image stabilizer when your camera is mounted to a tripod.
For example theCanon 70-200 f2,8would be a great lens for zoo photography, it provides an excellent image quality, has an inbuilt image stabilizer and a great focal length zoom range, it’s quite exepensive but worth its price.

The eyes must be in focus

If you want to photograph animals, one thing that has to be in focus must be the eyes. Try to make them as sharp as possible. If the animal you want to photograph is resting, lying or sitting you have the chance to use your live view to get the right focus point. Live view will help you to get more control over focus because you can easily zoom in to test your image sharpness and to see where your focus point is. So in the live view mode, you can adjust your focus point precisely while using the manual focus ring of the lens. Live view will help you to focus exactly on the eyes of your subject.

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/80, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/500, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Be there early in the morning

I strongly recommend entering the zoo early in the morning as soon as it opens, because in the morning there will be not as many people as they will be at midday or on an afternoon and the animals will be also more active in the morning usually. Taking images in the morning has the advantage that there will be no one standing in front of you who might ruin your image or who might block your view. Also watch out for the feeding time, because then you might get great action images. To save time I would suggest to get yourself a map where you will find the animals you want to photograph, zoos normally offer them free of charge.
Camera: Canon 550D, Lens: Tamron 180, Exposure: 1/160, Aperture: f/3.5, Focal Length: 180 mm, ISO Speed: 100

Action shots

It’s really important to choose the right camera body if you wish to capture a brilliant action shot. I would recommend choosing a camera which can provide a high rate of frames per second to capture fast movements of animals and therefore to get out the most of an interesting sequence. The more frames per second your camera can provide, the more sequences you will have and the better your chances of capturing interesting behavior. Modern cameras can provide up to 16 frames per second, for example, canon’s 1D X Mark II can shoot at a staggering 16 frames per second when working in live view, and 14 fps when working with the viewfinder.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading our tips! Thanks for reading & see you next time!

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Julian Rad

Julian Rad is a self-taught award-winning wildlife photographer, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1991. When he bought his first camera at the age of 20, he found an expression for the fascination he had about nature & wildlife. He already had many publications in national and internation magazines and newspapers (New York Post, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Times, GEO, Digital Photographer Magazine...). He has won several photo competitions such as the comedy wildlife photography awards in 2015.