Polar Bear

[sadiedane]

I went to the zoo today. I am curious what you think of the composition & exposure of this image. New to photographing animals. Would you use a different aperture like F/8? Any feed back is welcome.



Nikon D70S
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture-priority AE
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm

[Visions]

That is a delightful shot of the polar bear. What is the blue strip at the bottom? Do you think it means something? You must do, otherwise you would have removed it by cropping. ( I could tell you what I would do but it is important that you ask yourself!) I was rather amazed at the shutter speed used - obviously because you used Aperture priority. But the bear is sharp and there is detail in the highlights in his fur and the color is good too so continue as you are! If the depth of field was too shallow and parts you wanted to be in focus were blurry then you change your aperture to a bigger f stop and take another shot.
Nice shot - wish I had taken it! AJ

[sadiedane]

Thanks for the critique AJ. The blue at the bottom is snow that is in the shade. I am not sure why I didn't crop it out. Now that you point it out it should go. Looks much better gone. I won a trip to Churchill Canada through Outdoor Photography to photograph & view polar bears. I went to the zoo to practice photographing the bears before all the snow is gone. Thanks again
Charlie

[Visions]

Congratulations, Charlie, I hope you see plenty of polar bears with lots of interesting activity and that you get the same amount of detail that you have acchieved in this photo taken at the zoo. What a wonderful opportunity! AJ

[Photosbykev]

Originally Posted by sadiedane

Thanks for the critique AJ. The blue at the bottom is snow that is in the shade. I am not sure why I didn't crop it out. Now that you point it out it should go. Looks much better gone. I won a trip to Churchill Canada through Outdoor Photography to photograph & view polar bears. I went to the zoo to practice photographing the bears before all the snow is gone. Thanks again
Charlie

Churchill is high on my must visit list Shooting the bears in the snow there you will need to careful of the exposure compensation you use. You should get to know how to read and evaluate the histogram on the camera. White bear in white snow will make the camera underexpose to give an average exposure so you may have to increase the exposure slightly to get clean whites without blowing them.

[sadiedane]

Originally Posted by Visions

Congratulations, Charlie, I hope you see plenty of polar bears with lots of interesting activity and that you get the same amount of detail that you have acchieved in this photo taken at the zoo. What a wonderful opportunity! AJ

Thanks AJ.

Originally Posted by Photosbykev

Churchill is high on my must visit list Shooting the bears in the snow there you will need to careful of the exposure compensation you use. You should get to know how to read and evaluate the histogram on the camera. White bear in white snow will make the camera underexpose to give an average exposure so you may have to increase the exposure slightly to get clean whites without blowing them.

I am so excited for this trip. The exposure problem is one of the reasons I went to our zoo. There was still some snow, hopefully there will be snow on our trip. It will be a challenge but is going to fun. I wish I had a fast, long zoom lens to take.