With a new Tamron 150-500mm lens in tow, I decided another visit to Tarogna Zoo was needed to further test it out, and of course my own abilities to capture birds, even if they were in cages!
After paying an even higher price than my last visit in April this year, I entered Taronga Zoo on what can only be described as a very overcast day, which is not ideal as the aviaries the birds are in are not very bright to begin with.
I am certain my last visit was $39 entry fee, today it was $49, plus another $19 for parking, but at least it is going to a good cause. I made the mistake of forgetting that private schools are all on holidays now so the Zoo was rather busy, but thankfully not too many people seemed to be interested in the aviaries, which I had to myself mostly.
Due to the overcast day, I found myself using ISO settings above 2000 ISO, and on occasions as high as 12,800 ISO. The Tamron performed pretty well, although it did struggle to focus a few times in the poor light, but where light was good, the animal eye focus of the Sony A7R IV picked up the eye of some birds and locked on well.
The method of processing is what really saved these images however: I processed all of them in DXO Photolab using either PRIME noise reduction for images under 2000 ISO or DeepPRIME noise reduction for images over 2000 ISO. I then exported the images as DNG files and finished the processing in Capture One. Can you pick the image that was 12.800 ISO?
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