Picture of the Day

Moose watching the evening of Saturday, August 9, 2008.



I was using my Nikon D40 (the nearly identical D40X needs repairs -- and exactly a year and three months after purchase, so it's not covered by the one year warranty) for these photos. It's tough to shoot at night without a tripod -- I was balancing my camera on a sign post about 25-30 feet up the hill and using my 70-300 mm Nikkor lens (which is a pain in the butt because it only functions in manual with the Nikon dSLRs -- manual focus at night is even more difficult because you can't tell when something is slightly off).

You'll notice that the photo below practically looks like a water color painting ... it's not sharp, but it has yielded the lighting we actually had on the moose (a combination of a car's high beams and various flashlights wielded by people). This is the night portrait setting at work. The top two photos were taken in auto.