Shooting Through Mesh (Zoo Photos)

[allie5]

Im taking the kids to another local wildlife park tomorrow and quick look at their web page tell me that their big cats are in mesh enclosures, not glass.

I had a lot of trouble at another park a few weeks ago with this, probably 8 out of 10 shots ruined as I couldnt seem to zoom through enough.

Here are a couple of examples - the view looked fine through the viewfinder, but obviously wasnt.

Is there a certain way to shoot through this sort of mesh - what sort of settings should I be using to get the best results?

Any help appreciated. For info I was using a Canon 70-300IS lens which is my longest ranged lens.

Cheers.

Allie

 

[dmthoma76]

How did you get that close! Wowsers! The top photo does not look that bad.

You need to manually focus, with my lens I have a 300mm sigma, I put it on manual and focus. Don't get too close to the mesh. I have shot some pics of my son at ball games thru a fence this way.

~Donna

 

[Geoff_M]

Tips...
1) Place the lens right against the mesh.
2) Try and make sure none of the mesh (I'm assuming the mesh is roughly the same density as chicken wire) is dead center on your lens.
3) Set the lens aperture wide open.
4) This probably isn't an option, but in the sports photography world, when shooting though fencing there's a magic product called "fence-away". The rest of the world knows it as "flat black spray paint". Then applied to the area of fence you are shooting through it minimizes the amount of light that reflects off of the fence wire that makes that white-ish fuzzy area in the middle of your image above!

 

[photo_chick]

This one is through a green coated mesh, Canon 75-300. I could not get all the way up to it. It was a very tight mesh too. This shot is on my list of things for DH to photoshop for me. (I'm not the best at cloning things out and he is an expert, so I let him do it!!)

 

[woody64]

Nice pics and good luck. Sometimes you just have to take the shot. This pic was from the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. The leopard was about 10'-12' above me so there was nothing I could do about the netting.

 

[allie5]

Thanks all. I read all your tips and did a little better today! Only a few shots were unsavable due to mesh marks!

Here are a few that Id like to share.

IMAGES REDOWNLOADED LATER

 

[Groucho]

The quality of the photos looks terrific - but what's doing the resizing? Is that done by Photobucket?

Their resizing algorithm is really doing a number on some of the details, you see it most in the whiskers - you can see clear stair-steps on them, and in the second photo (prairie dog?), a few whiskers are turned into some kind of rainbow almost? Curiously, the second photo also appears to be missing any exif data.

I suppose if it's Photobucket, there's nothing you can do (I don't think they give you a choice of resizing algorithm), but if you're doing it yourself...

It's a shame as it looks like there's a lot of fine detail to be seen and that the resizing is doing a disservice to it.

 

[allie5]

YEs Im having tech probs with these. Ive sorted it now and will download the images later.

 

[allie5]

Hopefully these will be OK...

 

[allie5]

I hope these appear OK this time!

 

[Jeanne B]

They need to do some teeth whitening for this guy (or gal)!!

Great shots!!

 

[Shifletjl]

Allie5, you did it! Your last set of pictures look great. Please share your technique. I would really like to learn how you did it.

 

[allie5]

Allie5, you did it! Your last set of pictures look great. Please share your technique. I would really like to learn how you did it.

Thanks!

Well, I took all the tips posted here and tried them out as much as I could. I moved my dial off of auto onto aperture priority and set it wide open. Although it wasnt possible to put the lens through the wire (an 18" barrier prevented this!) I knew to try and focus dead centre through the mesh if possible. I also learnt from this thread that sunlight glaring off of the mesh caused a lot of problems so used DH and a coat as a "shield" to stop so much glare (dead professional arent I?) . I tried a combination of manual and autofocus as well.

It worked pretty well - only a handful of shots were unsavable this time. I did have a few focusing problems on the tigers as they were about 40 feet away in shadow and I was standing in bright sun in front of a glare ridden mesh too large for me block out. A bit of photoshopping sorted out the worst of it though.

Thanks for your comments!

Allie

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

It worked pretty well - only a handful of shots were unsavable this time. I did have a few focusing problems on the tigers as they were about 40 feet away in shadow and I was standing in bright sun in front of a glare ridden mesh too large for me block out.

Great job ... the sleeping/yawning big cats are awesome!! That snoozing male lion, with his great big paw resting on a rock in the frame, is my favorite; the lighting really suits him!

I can't see even a hint of fence distortion in these last pics ... even the tigers in the shade look sharp!

 

[Shifletjl]

.... used DH and a coat as a "shield" to stop so much glare (dead professional arent I?)....

Good tip. I would'nt have thought to do that. Thanks for the info!

 

[Groucho]

Looks great! And the different resizing is better, too... whiskers are always tough with any resizing algorithm but I knew that they should look better than in the first batch.