Saturday, September 12, 2009

Paradise Wildlife Park - again

So today I visited Paradise Wildlife Park again. Not my first choice - I'd rather visit a new conservation park - but I was invited by some friends, so why not :) It's nice to shoot less seriously and have people to chat with. In anycase, after the mistake of not bringing my flash extender to the UK Wolf Conservation, I basically brought the same kit out - D300, 70-300VR, SB600 plus the flash extender.

One upside is I finally managed to see the Snow Leopard Cub :) This is not a picture I'd normally take - showing too much of the man made environment. I'd also had a video taken of the mom and cub. I'm actually glad that I am using a digital camera for my video needs. I do NOT want "hd" as all I'm doing is uploading to youtube, and not doing some video editing - I could use the space for my raw stills.

I highly doubt the amount of people buying dslrs for HD video are actually using them after the novelty wears off. That said, it is a feature I'd really like, even if I do not use it. Like for example, live view :P

Tamarins were as usual a pain in the rear to meter proper and focus on.

The reindeer are fascinating, but it's quite difficult to get a natural shot. The best I could do was to shoot this abstract. I'd wanted to go low for another shot but the furball decided to move away. Gah.

I'll leave you with a meerkat shot. Not particularly wonderful, just that this furball specifically came down from his guardpost at the top of the faux termite mound for a picture. How could I resist.

Here's a 100% crop. I think for a prosumer lens, it is pretty good. The main downside of course is the slower aperture, but there is VR - which helped so much for the snow leopard cub shots at 1/50th of a second. My 300/4 would be *useless* unless I had proper support. If only there was a 300/4VR, it would be the perfect portable medium tele lens. I have quibbles with the D300's noise pattern though. Low iso or not, it feels more visible in prints. Gah.

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