A Day Out at the Australian Reptile Park

In our continued self-imposed Olympus OM1 training, we recently visited the Australian Reptile Park near Gosford. Like Symbio, this is a great place to put some of the new camera's features to the test. It was also a fun day out. Here are some of our best efforts. The hardest pictures to get are of course the enclosures that are behind glass or wire. But if, as we discovered, the critters are indoors, and are luxuriating under extremely specialised infra red lighting, good results can be a bit of a struggle.

Caged Mexican orange-kneed Tarantula. Pic by Natalie Hitchens.
1/100s @ f2.8, ISO2000.

Close up of a Green Iguana at rest.
(600mm focal length lens) 1/125s @ f4, ISO400.

Snoozy Tassie Devil. Pic by Natalie Hitchens.

Glimpse of a Feathertail Glider, the smallest gliding mammal in the world, in the nocturnal house in the Park. It was tiny, very active and therefore very hard to snap! This was a great result by Natalie Hitchens. 1/100s @ f2.8, ISO6400.

Feathertail Glider munching in its food bowl. It stayed in this position for a second or two only - I wasn't quick enough to get a shot but Natalie was.
1/100s @ f2.8, ISO6400.

Tiny Red-Browed Finch , one of several that were almost lost in the large parrot enclosure.
Pic by Natalie Hitchens.

Local Kookaburra watching over the enclosures at the park.
1/320s @ f11, ISO 3200.

Pair of Green and Golden Tree Frogs taken through glass in the Park's breeding centre. (In hindsight, this needed an aperture of f8 or smaller to get both frogs sharp).
1/2000s @ f2.8, ISO800.

Black-winged Stilt - common enough birds - you can see hundreds of these shoreline feeders in and around Olympic Park.

Unusual (to us) pair of black and white Dingoes. 
Pic by Natalie Hitchens.

Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby sitting on a rock!
Pic by Natalie Hitchens.

Another inmate at the frog pond- no idea what type of frog this is - again, taken through glass making it hard to minimise reflections from the bright day outside. Pic by Natalie Hitchens.

I think this was a type of Water Dragon, pictured in its glass fronted enclosure. Great detail in the head and body of this lizard.
Focal length, 200mm. 1/800s @ f4, ISO3200.

Close-up, through glass of 'Fluffy', a Burmese Python.
Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/60s @ f2.8, ISO2000.

Very close close-up of a Brown Tree Snake (I think?). Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/250s @ f2.8, ISO 2000.

Green Iguana (in a tank with mixed lighting)
Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/400s @ f2.8, ISO 2000.

The Duck-billed Platypus has a room (tank) to its own - it's very active, almost always on the move and therefore hard to capture with a camera. Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/13s @ f2.8, ISO1600.

The park has a huge population of American Alligators. 
Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/500s @ f2.8, ISO200.

Close-up detail of a Lace Monitor (through glass)
1/125s @ f6.3, ISO2500, -0.7 Exp Comp.

Green Iguana snapped through glass in the indoor enclosure. Most shots like this are tricky - not so much because of the low light levels but because of the reflections in the glass - some of this can be retouched out, some not. Success can be a bit hit and miss.1/125s @ f4, ISO320.

Lace Monitor in an enclosed exhibit. Aside from being able to get really close, another advantage of using a telephoto lens is that you only include a small area of glass in the frame - and therefore can limit the amount of reflection in the photo. 1/250s @ f9, ISO3200.

Rainbow Lorikeets splashing about in the guttering around the park's entrance building. 1/1600s @ f7.1, ISO3200.

Common Bronzewing looking slightly ruffled (and not quite as sharp as I'd hoped it would be).
1/500s @ f5.6, ISO3200.

Close up of a snoozing Flying Fox
Hard to know how these bats can actually snooze with a continuous stream of kids walking through their enclosure.
1/320s @ f5.6, ISO3200.

Australian Green and Golden Tree Frog in the Reptile Park's breeding centre.

New Caledonian Giant Gecko being shown at the Reptile Park's show and tell display. 1/320s @ f5.6, ISO3200.

Rainbow Lorikeets - these are wild birds being fed some sort of cereal porridge by one of the park's rangers. 600mm focal length. 1/1250s @ f11, ISO3200.

Echidna on the prowl
1/125s @ f7.1, ISO3200.

Two Quokkas caught posing at an interesting angle.
1/200s @ f6.3, ISO3200.

Fat-tailed Dunnert - another tiny, incredibly active nocturnal mouse-like animal from WA. I was amazed to get a snap of this hyper-active little critter. Apparently the males only live about 15 months, the females last about 18 months. Because this is in the nocturnal house, the lighting is red - a colour that these creatures can't see well and so they behave as if it is dark. Perfect for the animals, not so good for the photographer. 1/50s @ f4, ISO10000.

This is what the RAW file looked like - as if red cellophane is draped across the lens. It took a lot of tweaking to get the colour as you see in the file above.

Lace Monitor
Pic by Natalie Hitchens. 1/250s @ f2.8, ISO2000.