Facing my fears at London Zoo: High ISO and BBF | London Portrait Photographer

I’ve already said it in a couple of previous blog posts and I say it again: I have a fear of unwanted noise. So I keep my ISO down and suffer in other areas such as focus or light. Then I fix in Photoshop. Happy. Not quite. Something in me wanted to conquer this fear. I know many digital cameras nowadays can handle noise much better than a couple of years ago and my D7K is certainly reviewed to be great at keeping noise down. So why am I still not ramping that ISO up?

Monday was Zoo Day, the penultimate day we could use our Tesco vouchers which I’ve exchanged for Zoo tokens. I took my family to the zoo with 3 main aims:

1. take decent photos of the kids
2. conquer my fear of high ISO
3. practise BBF

BBF {not bestest best friend} stands for back-button focusing – another feared thing. BBF is focusing by pressing another button at the back of the camera instead of half-pressing the shutter to focus and and then pressing it all the way down to take the photo – this description is lame so if you want to know more about it, best to google it.

I fear that if I switched to BBF, my fingers would not be fast enough to select my desired single focus point {out of the 39 points on my D7K!} and then BBF and then click the shutter, especially when I am running around after active children. The thought of trying to do all these in a matter of seconds was too daunting. But Zoo day is the day. What better subjects to practise on than oblivious zoo creatures in a variety of forms, and of course my own kiddie creatures – all three of them, and all at once.

We arrived at the Zoo before it opened and left not long before it closed. My kids had seen everything and were exhausted; my husband and I were beyond exhausted. But I got my photos. And I ramped up my ISO {-even up to 6400!} And I used BBF for nearly the entire day. I went home a tired but fulfilled Mummy and a happy photographer. And there’s no looking back. From now on, I’ll take high ISO on anytime, BBF is my new BF and my shutter can be just that, a shutter.

Scroll down to view some photos and scroll to the end to get links of the full sets of photos.

To view the full sets, click here for the zoo creatures, and here for my three little creatures.