[JMitchell]

Card arrived today (first full day of having D300, so phew), and I went straight out to the nearest place that looks like far away, Richmond Park

Was impressed, of course, with the entire feel of the new machine, and it's controls, but sometimes got a little lost.... ("Right....set ISO.....NO NOT MENU!" etc). These are a selection of shots with small commentaries for those interested, mainly to make up for me being currently worse than the camera....


The first thing I came upon was a woodpecker.....on the bank of a river.....


But he decided to fly away after letting me get that close, and considering I had not yet firgured out how to turn on 3D 51 point AF colour tracking, I think I did relatively wellt o get this (cropped) shot, with the camera flailing in my hands, at 6 fps; something I'm definitely not used to, but certainly a welcome addition:

Then I had to wait awhile, because I saw this shot, then the sun disappeared....used the Nikon 'Active D-lighting' for this, whereby it (somehow) preserves shadow and highlight detail, and I think it did pretty well, putting aside the sun which isn't exposable for...



Then I saw this twisted tree, forgot I was shooting in manual (no mode dial), and didn't turn on d-lighting , but still got quite a nice shot



Then I walked past the lodge place, and thought I could take a nice shot of it with the sky, which was getting a little nicer:



It was off to the deers next, and the first one I saw was an 'ickle babee'. The bright sun made exposure hard....I seemed to have forgotten about d-lighting....



Then two stags locked horns, and the fast AF managed to pick them out (cropped, slightly):



Finally, on the way back, I saw a tit by the river, and took a shot through some branches at quite high ISO (cropped):



TFL

Jack

[JMitchell]

Sorry about the writing....something seems to be amiss with the formatting....

EDIT: Don't worry, all fixed now. Summat up with firefox so I edited it with Safari....odd....

[simpbow]

Very nice Jack, nice set of images there, are you impressed with your new buddy?, what lens is that if you don't mind me asking.?

[JMitchell]

Thanks, yeah I am really impressed so far, although I am aware that I will have 'big shiny new camera' syndrome for a while, and I wont expect it to be able to do half the things it can, because of the massive gap between it and the D50. How dare you ask what lenses I used Lol, no. The wide shots were taken with the 18-70 like you have, and the deer and birds ones were with the Sigma 70-300

[simpbow]

18-70,s gem of a lens i think, tried a few bird shots with Nikon 70-210 but cant get close enough at the minute without scaring them off, didn't know i was that bad.

[simpbow]

Sorry forgot to say, good luck with yur new friend.

[Dabhand16]

Nice set Jack You had a good day for it.

You are at the bottom of the familiarity curve with the camera but still got some good shots - well done.

Worthy of the Pixalo Member of the Month

[Fangman]

That lot should make you a very happy bunny - Go forth and multiply or at least expose . . .if you don't get arrested.

[Charlotte]

A nice first set from your new toy Jack, I really like the first two shots, and I think you did really well for your first outing with the beast

[Wannabe]

Looks like you're having fun with it! Love the baby deer!

[JMitchell]

Thanks for all the positive comments. I really enjoyed it, reinforcing my decision to spend what I did....still waiting for the grip though 8 fps here I come