Please, Little Zoo Bird in a Very Dark Room, Hold Still

It's ok. You can go ahead and ask: "What were you thinking!"

I was shooting this little zoo bird in an extremely dark room, where the bird was set in his own extremely dark little section of the room. I was shooting through some kind of mesh screen (you wondered how I got that nifty line effect...). What's more, I was shooting with my Sony NEX-6 with my 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 Telephoto Lens attached, so that I could actually get in really close to the bird. Welcome to the world of blurry photos!

In order to capture this image, not only did I need to hold really still, but I also needed this pretty little zoo bird to hold really still... for at least eight-tenths of a second, which is an eternity in camera time (at least, when shooting animals). And, this bird seemed to have had his coffee that day, because he was moving around all over the place!

Looking back at these, some of them are simply painful! So, when I found one that was (mostly) in focus, I processed it (single image through Photomatix 5), and found that this really was a pretty little bird... if you could hold still... and get him to hold still... long enough to take his picture.