I love the reptile enclosure at the Melbourne Zoo (except for the increased temperature), but it poses a challenge to taking photos due to the reduced light. The Fijian crested iguana (Brachylophus vitiensis) was no exception. When trying to take photos like these, ideally if you have a tripod that will be easiest as you will likely need to capture a speed slower than you can steadily hold the lens; in my case I had a Sigma 150mm Macro so needed a shutter speed of at least 1/150 or faster.

If you don't have the ability to use a tripod (and the Zoo is one of those examples), then you may want to consider increasing the ISO of your lens and adjusting the aperture as wide as possible to let in as much light as you can so that you can achieve the required shutter speed to prevent motion blur when photographing still objects.

Equipment Used:

As with all of my images, I use Nikon gear. This is not because I think Nikon is better than Canon but just because it is what I got started with and wanted to maintain lens compatibility. The images were captured and edited with the following gear;

• Nikon D610 DSLR
• 150.0 mm f/2.8
• Adobe Lightroom CC

Images (Click to enlarge):

[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”51″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_pro_mosaic” row_height=”180″ margins=”5″ last_row=”justify” lazy_load_enable=”1″ lazy_load_initial=”35″ lazy_load_batch=”15″ ngg_proofing_display=”0″ captions_enabled=”0″ captions_display_sharing=”1″ captions_display_title=”1″ captions_display_description=”1″ captions_animation=”slideup” is_ecommerce_enabled=”1″ order_by=”imagedate” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]