Photography in Zoo

Got a nice DSLR? You want to take photos of the birds and animals inside the cage/fence?

Are you ending up getting nicely focused fence/cage than the bird or animal? Its very easy to fix.  

Change the focusing mode to 'manual' or in other words remove auto focus and focus on the subject manually. Keep your aperture size big enough(small F-number) to get the fence out of focus but small enough(large F-number) to get the subject in super sharp. 

Two things you need to do
1) Change camera's focus mode to manual
2) Change lens' focus mode to manual

You may need to move bit front or back to get the cage out of focus while focusing manually.

A word of caution
Do not keep the lens in manual focus mode and the camera in auto focus mode. For this  follow the below steps

While changing from auto focus to manual focus, first switch camera to manual focus mode and then the lens to manual focus mode.

while changing back from manual focus mode to auto focus mode first bring the lens to auto focus mode then the camera to the auto focus mode.

This will protect your lens' auto focus mechanisms.

So what you need to know?

1) Find out how to change the camera from auto focus mode to manual focus mode and back.
2) Find out how to change the lens' focus mode from auto to manual and back
3) Know where is the focus ring on lens and the effect of turning it clockwise and anti clockwise and
4) What is the indication in camera's live view or view finder for sharp focus on the subject.

See the user manual of your camera and lens for the above since its different for different camera and lens.

Practice focusing manually on the subject. You will see a new world through lens.

Some of the photos in the below link were taken with manual focus.

https://picasaweb.google.com/114216357601642540206/JurongBirdParkSingapore

hmm... that's it.