Tuesday, June 3, 2014

154/365-2 Wildlife


 'Squirrel Friend"

There is not much wildlife around here unless you count the dog and cat chasing one another onto and then under the bed, and I don't think that is the intention of today's prompt.  All we have are a bully bluejay, a few grackles and doves and many squirrels.  I'm not sure that the squirrels even count for wildlife.  They don't even bother to run when we, or the dogs, go outside.  The squirrels are definitely comfortable in their surroundings.

I decided that today would be a good day to spend some time with my new super zoom lens.  What I learned is that I am going to need a lot more practice!  600mm is a big lens!  Even though I was shooting on a stable tripod, I still got quite a bit of camera shake when I pressed the shutter release.  The take-away from that is I need to use a remote shutter release when I shoot with this lens.    I don't have one for my current camera, but I do for my older one.  I'll give it a try and see what happens.

I read somewhere that you need to shoot as fast as you can when using this lens.  I had my ISO set to auto.  My other settings were obviously not very good because my ISO ended up really high and I got a lot of noise in these images.  I don't know why that bothers me so much, but it does.  Lots of things to think about for next time...

Also, squirrels move quickly!  That doesn't help with the sharpness.  


This guy doesn't seem to mind being my subject.  I suspect he'll be back and we can try this again-especially if I put the good stuff in the bird feeders!