Chapter Ten: Through the Looking Glass (and Fence)

Taken through a chain link fence

I had the opportunity to visit the local zoo recently and I don't know about how the animals are contained at your zoos but a lot of them are kept behind chain link fences in mine so shooting pictures of them can get kind of tricky.  There is a simple trick to make chain link fences almost disappear from the pictures but it does require some gear.  You're going to need a telephoto lens.  Something over 100 mm.  Preferably 200 mm +.  Here's the part that may be a little scary to some new photographers - you're going to have to switch your lens from automatic to manual (there should be a switch probably on the lens itself somewhere).  You see, the reason the chain link shows up in the pictures is because the camera thinks that is what you're trying to focus the camera on which makes focusing on the animals difficult in automatic mode.  You'll want to shoot zoomed out towards the telephoto end.  Then you'll want to manually focus the image so that the chain link disappears while the animal is still in focus (there should be a ring somewhere on your lens for this).  That's the tricky part.  Since you'll be manually focusing, you'll definitely want to make sure you review the photo on the LCD screen and zoom in to 100% and look around to make sure the photo is in focus.