Sometimes it’s not the resolution that matters. It’s not the sharpness in the center of the lens. It’s not the color rendition or the cleanness of the noise. It’s the fact that you got the photo at all.
This is Tonks. Baby of Smeagol and Bellatrix of the Denver Zoo. Aye-Ayes are nocturnal, so their habitat is set to be lit the opposite of the rest of Denver; around 8am it becomes dusk, and by the time that most people arrive, it’s only lit dimly by a few red LEDs.
So getting a good picture of the pretty girl? Not easy unless you have the kind of access I don’t. Instead, I’m cranking my ISO to the virtually unusable 25,600, dropping the shutter speed to 1/50th (she’s a mover; any slower and there’d be [more] motion blur), and trying to manually focus at f/1.4 at minus a million EV. Manually focus isn’t even right; it implies active movement. I focused on the log which was barely visible, and hung out until I saw the little bebe girl move into frame, hoping to catch something, anything. This was the anything. All told? Not terrible; at least I got her.
The Zootographer 