Moonscape

Spent some time taking photos of the moon and stars the other night. This was my favorite! I was surprised at how much detail showed. I will have more to post soon.

Zoo Safari III

Thought I would post a few more photos from the zoo trip.

This is one of the two rhinoceroses at the Tulsa Zoo.


They have beautiful flowers in the Tropical Rain Forest Exhibit.


Another flower from that exhibit.


The always majestic lion.


Meerkat!


Be sure to visit my Flickr site if you want to see all my photos. Speaking of sites...I just joined Facebook! I never really thought about it until one of my coworkers urged me to join. I am amazed at how many of my friends are on Facebook. I'll add a link to my page later today.

Zoo Safari II

I'm pretty pleased with the Canon XSi. The zoo trip was a good measure as I have taken photos of the same subjects with my two other DSLRs and I knew I would be able to compare the differences. The Canon is a 12mp camera and my D80 was 10mp so I didn't know if there would be an discernible advantage. In my opinion, the Canon's 12mp sensor did a better job and showed a noticible resolution advantage. To me, the photos from the Canon are just more pleasing to the eye than those of my Nikon. As I said below, I have always been a huge Nikon fan so it is not easy for me to admit.

When I would take the D80 to the Tulsa Zoo for a day, I would usually come home with about 60% of my photos "postable". The other 40% had noticible focus or exposure issues that were beyond fixing in Photoshop. I was amazed to see almost all of my photos from the XSi usable. I would guesstimate that about 90% of the photos were correctly exposed and had good focus. This is in spite of the fact that I accidently had my EV setting two full stops in the negative for the first half of my photos!

All of that said, the Nikon D80 and Canon XSi are both wonderful cameras. You can't go wrong with either camera. Knowing what I know now, I would choose the XSi above the D80. Here are some of my favorites from last weekends photo safari at the Tulsa Zoo.









I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend. Don't forget to honor those who died so that we could be free. This post is dedicated to my grandfather, Lonnie Ables, who served in World War II.

Zoo Safari

I spent a couple of hours at the Tulsa Zoo yesterday taking photos. I ended up with around 260 photos! I an using a Canon XSi that I bought a couple of weeks ago. I believe I took some of the best photos I have ever taken. Don't get me wrong, I have had 3 DSLRs (Olympus E-330, Nikon D80, and now the XS-i) and they have all taken some wonderful photos. But, I don't ever remember getting output that was this consistently good. I have used digital cameras since the beginning and have always been a Nikon man but I think this Canon is going to change my outlook significantly. I used my 55-250mm EF-S IS lens for the entire day and just captured one great photo after another. I know that some of it is my increasing experience and the studying I have done. Mostly, I think it is my new equipment, though.

I will be posting photos to Flickr and the blog starting tonight so keep your eyes open. I will probably post in sets of 10 to Flickr and follow up with post here. It takes forever to process 260 RAW images!

While you wait, here is something recent I took.

Clouds

We have had rain in Tulsa for twenty two days straight now. The good news is that it has presented a lot of weather photography opportunities! I sold my tripod because it wasn't what I wanted so I ended up trying to take handheld night time lightning photos. That failed miserably. I did get a few interesting photos but no good lightning shots. Here is a night shot of the clouds as a thunderstorm rolled in last night.



This is cloud to cloud lightning lighting up the clouds.



I took this photo looking straight up. I really like how it turned out!



If you get a chance, check out this new website. Photocrati is a very nice site about photography. To be honest, it is one of the better websites I have seen. They cover a lot of news on DSLRs and software that is of interest to me. Check it out! Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Sorry!

I can't believe that it has been nearly a year since I last posted to this blog! I am ashamed. I don't have a good excuse other than it has been a busy and trying year.

Here is a quick rundown of the past year's events. My wife and I moved to a new home. She is still working as a paramedic....and she is still on an opposite shift from me. It suck having no seniority! She caught meningitis from a patient and spend a couple of weeks in the hospital. I am still at the same job and in the same position. I have not done any geocaching in a long time. I sold my beloved Nikon to help finance our move. To be honest, it was not so beloved as I wasn't completely satisfied with the camera. My MS is status quo and I haven't had much progression! My chronic back pain due to my MS is worse than ever. Winston and Delia (my two Dachshunds) are still terrorizing anyone they come in contact with. I bought a Canon XS-i a week ago and LOVE it. I discovered Oklahoma casinos (specifically, Cherokee Casino in Catoosa). I think that is it!?!

Since I bought my new camera, I should be posting a lot more often. I made it to Woodward Park at lunch the other day so I will leave you with a recent photo.