Does anyone use normal lenses (fixed lenses from 40 to 60 mm for fullframe and APS-C cameras) to photograph at zoos? What focal length (35 mm equivalent) do you prefer when you have a zoom lens on your camera?
If you can get close enough to the animals, I think you could get good results with a fixed (prime) lens. However, for anything other than large animals, I think you'll really need something at least 200mm to get any good results. That being said, if your camera is high enough resolution, you can probably get away with a shorter lens and cropping the photo - at least to a degree ... you'd still want something over 100mm though. Personally, unless I'm shooting elephants, I'm typically right up there in the 300 - 400mm range when I'm shooting at a zoo - animals at least, enclosures you'd want something much wider (perhaps even as wide as 10-22mm sometimes). When I was travelling overseas on my own a lot, I would often do two loops around a zoo, one with my 100-400mm lens on the camera taking animal shots, then another with my 10-22mm lens on, taking enclosure shots. If I was only going to get time for one lap, then I'd carry a compact camera for enclosure shots.
'Normal' lenses can be useful if they have wide apertures (f/2 or less) in nocturnal exhibits as this helps with focus and you don't need quite such a high ISO setting. A macro lens with this sort of focal length can work well in a reptile house or an aquarium. I'm so old fashioned that I don't use zooms if I can avoid it. I know I would only use the maximum focal length. Alan
Good point - reptile houses, nocturnal exhibits and other indoor enclosures are difficult to photograph without using a flash. A good fast lens will help here, as will a decent camera that has high ISO options for when your lens just isn't fast enough. As a compromise, I would love a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens ... fast with a bit of length too ... but those babies are very expensive and very heavy.
I recently upgraded my point and shoot camera from a small one with a built in zoom to a Canon M with the fixed pancake 22mm (which in full frame terms is equivalent to 35mm). I wanted the better quality of a larger sensor (it has the same sensor as most of their recent DSLR's like the 60D), it was still small enough to take anywhere, and they were clearing them out at the incredibly low price of 299 US dollars. For general overview shots (as well as non-zoo travel shots), it is great. For animals, however, a standard lens is not enough. You need telephoto not only to get close, but also to blur out fences if you are photographing through them. For a long time my main zoo lens was a fixed 300 f4 that I got a good deal on used. It was a fanatastic lens, but the lack of zoom meant sometimes it was actually too long for the framing I wanted. I recently sold it and now instead use a 70-200 f2.8 sometimes coupled with a 1.4x extender.
I have never used a "normal" lens at a zoo and would hate to be restricted to one as a focal length of 40 to 60mm is not wide enough for enclosure shots and not long enough for many animal shots. My standard lens for zoos is a Canon 70-300L on a Canon 7D (crop sensor). However sometimes it's too long so I also carry a Canon 24-105L on a Canon 6D (full frame) and a Canon S95 compact camera. The 70-300 focal range on a crop sensor is imho probably the ideal focal range for most zoo work other than large animals which are close to you and enclosure/general shots of the zoo.
This summer I bought a 17-50mm 2.8 lens for aquariums and nocturnal exhibits. I spent over $600. But after using it in two aquariums, I realized that I rarely went lower than 50mm. So if I had been smarter, I would have spent $215 and got the fixed 50mm 1.8. So while I haven't used a fixed lens, I think a fixed 50mm 1.8 would serve you well in some circumstances. However, you would also need to carry something much longer for the outdoor shots.
As a keeper and trainer I work close to animals, so I can use lens with short focal length. But I can hardly believe that you almost don't use wide angle. 50 mm is not so wide even on full frame camera. I spend very few money for my photo equipment so I have Canon 450D double-kit (18-55 and 55-250 mm lenses) and 40 mm f/2.8 fixed lens at this moment. I want to have much faster lens of course but it will be definitely not normal lens, but 40 mm is quite convenient in many cases. When beginners in photography ask what lenses they should buy they often get the answer to buy cheap zoom(s) (kit) and later look into statistics on their pictures to understand preferred focal length. There are some programs that can provide this data (ExposurePlot/Wega2, Adobe Lightroom). Does anyone know such statistics on own photos?
Before I bought my lens, I looked at the focal length of my previous reptile and fish photos (the two groups I planned to use the lens for), and I found that most of my photos were in the 50-60mm range. Of course, I crop the photos, so the final product looks closer. I am not familiar with software that pulls bulk statistics, but using Microsoft Office Picture Manager (previously called Microsoft Photo Editor), I can easily views the properties one photo at a time. I'm sure many folks on here will strongly disagree with my choice, but I use the Microsoft product for all of my cropping and sizing and most brightness and contrast changes. I only use Photoshop Elements for serious brightness issues or to remove a distracting object from the background. Also, I just realized I misread your original post. I thought you were only interested in fixed lenses, but you were also asking about zooms. When I go to a zoo other than my two "home" zoos, I carry two cameras and three lenses. I have a 150-500 mm on one body and an 18-200 mm on the other. The 17-50 mm 2.8 is in my bag, and I swap it for the 150-500 when I am in a reptile house or aquarium. That still leaves me with an 18-200 on the other if I need more range (but with less light).
A bit of Googling found this program: ExposurePlot jpg exif lens length analyzer for photographers Unfortunately (for me), it only works on JPG files, so I would need to do a bulk export of all my raw files out of Lightroom to get the files to run ExposurePlot against. Not difficult, just time consuming.
Yes, I know Lightroom works with RAW files - but how do you get focal length statistics from Lightroom in bulk (ie not one image at a time) ?? That's why I linked to the other program - it reads EXIF information from JPG files and gathers statistics for you, so to use it I would need to export all my RAW files out of Lightroom as JPGs and then run the ExposurePlot program over those exported files.
Hmmm... I thought that Lightroom can do it as shown at this picture: http://forum.ixbt.com/post.cgi?id=attach:20:26632:4673:1.jpg Of course you need to have all your photos added to Lightroom library for that.
Ahh - I didn't know you could change the data shown there - they need to make it more obvious that there is a drop-down menu! Thanks for the tip!
