This is a Balinese starling, possibly the rarest bird species in the world. It is critically endangered with less than 100 adults living in the wild. It is native only to Bali, and I was able to get this picture in a bird park near Ubud, Bali. To get a decent shot, I had to shoot through the mesh of the large enclosure and eliminate the distracting wire pattern. At first this seemed impossible because of the small openings in the wire pattern, but using a telephoto lens and placing it up against the mesh, along with a large lens aperture, I was able to reduce the depth of field to such an extent that the cage completely disappeared. In addition, I made the lens axis as perpendicular as possible to the wire. This also helped make it disappear. If I angled the camera to the plane of the cage to any significant degree, the out of focus mesh would have put a hazy film over the image. My settings were 1/640, f/5.6, 1600 ISO, and I used a Canon 100-400mm lens set to 400mm.
2 Comments
Sep 2, 2018, 11:41:26 AM
Jim - Good luck with that, Janie. Make sure you are using at least a 300mm lens, but a 400mm focal length is better in terms of making the DOF more shallow.
Sep 2, 2018, 9:36:08 AM
Janie Greene - Hey Jim,
What beautiful birds...Thanks so much for sharing them. I wrote down your instructions on how to photograph through the zoo wire. I never can get that down so that all of the wire disappears in the photograph....but maybe your instructions will help me.Thanks again, Janie G.