Houston Zoo 01, with the Big Cahoona

The first real photo shoot that I did with the Nikon D300s (which I have taken to calling the "Big Cahoona") was in June of this year, at the Davis Mountains. 14 of these photos were posted the same month on this blog. During that vacation it was obvious that, from the first frame that was snapped, I would never go back to relying on a point-and-shoot - even an advanced one such as the Fujifilm s7000 - as a primary camera again.

Having said that, it was also obvious that the learning curve would be steep. Carrying the Big Cahoona around was like toting a brick. On top of that, with a rig like the Big Cahoona, you HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!! I fell, and still fall, way short of that criterion.

However there is no denying that, technically, the images are a leap ahead of what I had to work with before; all I have to do is learn how to coax them out of the beast.

The posting today, along with the next two or three, were taken with the Nikon on a visit to the Houston zoo. I still was totally unadjusted to carrying the thing around, and it felt awkward, cumbersome, and frankly...maybe not worth all the dough I had spent on it? This is the trip on which I accidentally stumbled on an image or two that convinced me that, yes, buying the thing and carrying a brick around would be worth the trouble.

I love to play with depth of field, using zoom as a primary tool with which to experiment. A helicopter flew overhead, and as I swung the beast around to capture it was distracted by this view of a glass building with color in the foreground that could be used to adjust depth of field. The lens that I purchased with the Big Cahoona has the equivalent of 11x optical zoom, so this shot was much easier to capture than it would have been with the 6x of the Fujifilm. Additionally, I noticed in post-capture that there appears to be far less work necessary to adjust for levels, color, etc.