Colouring chameleons

Returning to the chameleons with a vengence after all my photos from the last trip came out poorly. I used ISO 400 to compensate for the darkness, but still could only use an aperature of f/5.0-5.6 to get a decent shutter speed of ~1/60s (with image stabiliser). This blurred the background pretty well but I think some of the photos could have done with f/6.3.

I shot using a custom white balance setting because none of the pre-sets matched the lighting well (flash setting was closest).

The glass didn't seem to cause as much problem as last time, although they were in a new tank, so maybe less reflections and refractions. There does seem to be some unusual distortions along some edges though.

Overall I think the images are a lot better than last time, but still plenty of flaws to iron out next time.

To process the images in photoshop I removed noise to reduce some of the speckles caused by using ISO 400. I still had to adjust the colour balance slightly, removing some green.

I like this shot, I think it has good eye contact, the eye is in focus, interesting arm shape, might have been nice to have a highlight in the eye.




This guy seemed to fail at adapting to his background. Distracting branch in the background but I like the texture and detail on the skin.


I like this one for it's composition, pose (mid stride stalking along the branch towards me) and expression on his face.



I like the curvy pose of this one too - the eye isn't in focus which is a shame, but with a wide aperture I just missed it. I think it's an interesting enough pose to go on here anyway.