GLOBAL PRO GALLERY
Mitsuaki Iwago
Mitsuaki IwagoJapan
When Iwago visited the Galapagos Islands in 1970, he was amazed at the overwhelming scale of nature, and this event marked the beginning of his journey as an animal photographer. World-renowned, Iwago is the first Japanese photographer to shoot two cover photos for National Geographic magazine. He has published many photo collections including Animals on Earth and The Natural Order of the African Plain. Lately his collections of cat photos are widely popular.
When I visit the Galapagos, I travel from island to island, spending the night in the boat.Upon reaching an island at dawn, I switch to a small rubber raft and then go ashore.Landing on some islands is prohibited, so I have to stay on the boat and photograph subjects on the shore.
I spotted a marine iguana clinging to the face of a rock.Although I got as close to the shore as possible on the rubber raft, I was still pretty far from the iguana. So I used the 300mm PRO lens with a maximum aperture of 1:4.0, with 35mm-equivalent focal length of 600mm.Its compact, lightweight size made it easy to hold.The ocean swells continued to rock our rubber raft and water sprayed onto the camera.The high-speed autofocus made it possible to quickly focus on the subject and the widest aperture setting made sufficiently fast shutter speeds possible so I didn’t miss a photo opportunity.The lack of camera-shake blur in the photos is just eerie.The image stabilisation function is superb.
The focus was so good that you can see in sharply focused shots how the pelicans ignored us while the marine iguana apparenty noticed our boat.This ultimate image quality is typical Olympus.
M.Zuiko Digital ED 300mm F4.0 IS PRO
600mm (35mm equivalent)
Hand-held shooting with a 600mm super-telephoto lens.