@qthemusic You can see the basic details by clicking on the Information tab, but I'm happy to expand on them.
D500 plus 105mm f/2.8 MicroNikkor, on a monopod with rubber lens hood against the glass and VR on, 1/15s at f/3 and 8000 ISO, EV-1. Auto white balance gave me a rather orange colour cast, which I corrected with Capture NX-2 to make the eyes and coat neutral black and grey (after checking other images of squirrel gliders to see the right colours). The light was very dim, so I had to set the ISO much higher than I would normally do, even so as the little chap was moving a little, the shutter speed was as slow as I dared to go, consequently the aperture was larger than I wanted and focus was critical. In the dim light the D500's autofocus was struggling, although it is normally very good, and it gave up completely when the animals were in the darkest spots. Fortunately this area of the enclosure was one of the brighter ones.
I actually took 49 separate photos of this animal in various poses in this spot from 9.55 to 10.13 (note that my camera is always set at GMT/UST, although BST was still in operation, so I didn't break into the zoo before opening time ). This was easily the best of them, as the exposure was right (I had checked the histogram after the first couple of images), the focus was spot on easily - seen from the whiskers, eyes and ears and the animal was quite still. In most of the others the animal was blurrred by movement, mostly head rotation and ear twitching or the focus was not quite right, although I tried to refocus regularly because of its movements and to improve my chances of getting the focus perfectly right.
49 exposures might seem excessive - but I had never seen a squirrel glider before and I thought that I might never get as good a chance again. It worked in this case, and as it happened I was lucky enough to get some close-up shots later in the day - they are also here and the settings were much the same.
@gentle lemur Thank you very much for the detailed account. It's always interesting to know the settings one uses, to get a decent photo in a very challenging situation. I have a Canon D80 (also crop sensor) and I would never use 8000 ISO, at most 800 ISO gives me relatively noisy shots. However my lenses are 5.6, so that's to be expected. I often carry my Lumix FZ1000 (bridge) as a second camera just for indoor shooting. I find that if I record 4k video (auto), then capture a particular frame whilst editing, I can get some decent shots in the nocturnal houses. They generally all have the IR glow though! I'll have to learn how to counteract that with my editing software.
