Photo of the Day
Today I went out to Wolf Park. I have not been back since I bought my yearly membership. I guess the fact that I can go anytime really prevents you from going. Today I had a mission though. I rented a 70-200mm 2.8 lens from Berry’s Camera Shop. I went in with a few questions yesterday, and they were very helpful to me. A lot of head scratching would have been avoided had I found the right person the first time. I have raved about them here before, and I still feel the same way. Sometimes it really does pay to buy locally. I really wanted to try some L series glass out so picked up the lens for the week. I will be in Chicago shooting some baseball next weekend so it made sense to me. Initially I would say my reaction to the lens is mixed. I can really see what this thing can do, but the problems so far are with the user. I really need to step up my game with this thing.
Another thing that I noticed is that the file size is huge. I have been shooting in just RAW mode lately which already takes up a lot of space. I was shooting early on today and I saw that I only had 11 pictures left. I knew that I wiped my card clean before leaving so it was a full 16GB card waiting for me. Apparently each file is about 25mb which fills up a card quickly. If I am going to shoot with this I really need some bigger cards. I thought that the 16mb card was already huge. I will have to re-think this system if browsing turns to buying in the future. I don’t know how the pros can keep cards in the cameras they way that they shoot always with a full buffer.
Enough about the lens. Today was also about the wolf puppies being introduced into the main pack at Wolf Park. I am not usually one to attend special events like this because it tends to be too crowded. I like to have my time out there. Today I got the best of both worlds. For some reason the grand stand was packed. When I got there though it was empty. I chose to sit in the observation room to shoot through the glass instead of shooting through a fence. For some reason only a few joined me in there, and not for very long. I had a blast watching the young wolves get used to the new environment, and then even more fun watching them interact with the four wolves that used to be the main pack. The numbers just grew, and I may have to make some more frequent trips out here to see the wolves in action. The young pups really seemed to like the water, and I just wish that I could have been a bit closer to see them out there. Maybe someday I will sign up for one of the photo shoots.
Technical Data
I have already talked a lot about the technical side of this picture as I talked about the new lens. The new lens is great, but as I said I have a long way to go to learn this thing. When I was at the park I took this shot last. When I saw it in the viewfinder I knew I was done for the day. That isn’t because of some cocky feeling of this was the best that I could do at all. It was the last picture that I could take. I had already deleted a few pictures to keep shooting. It was at this point that I realized that I was done for the day. Instead of the 300 or so pictures that I could have normally shot, I ended up with about forty. As usual lately I edited this shot in Lightroom. I used the daylight white balance setting to give it a better glow. I also adjusted the highlights and shadows a bit. Other than that I really liked how this picture looked out of the camera. Not much to do here.
Dave Wegiel Photography 