Two weekends in a row for the Memphis Zoo. Sunday morning, just as it was for Walmart in Meridian, MS,
is the time to get OUT and do things in Memphis. JUST so fewer idiots walking around on the street. Church
has em for the hour. Unless they go to Sunday School too, and I can get well over an hour away from em.

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That lion looks as though he just had a nice bath and shampoo. Wonder whose job that is?!
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Lion looks like he's ready for a date!
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Dang, Ron, thanks for the Mom shot. Well worth scrolling to the end. :-)

Likely no one cares, but I will share that these are combo of a Nikon D600 (for the resolution) and a
Nikkor 300mm f4.5 AI, and a D7000 with a Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED AI, both manual focus lenses.
The 300mm has chromatic aberration issues, but I am learning to avoid the hot spots that bring it on.
Luckily both these lenses meter fine on those bodies. I just have to dial in the Exposure Compensation
to keep the 300mm in check.

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This lady is such a good model....but she quits too early and takes naps.

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This little guy is such a star. Pretty soft shot, but cute, so I included it.

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Got back from a wedding in Arizona over the weekend, wish I had a good camera to take better pictures of the view from the clubhouse the reception was at. Guess I'll have to settle for cell pictures and memories :-)

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I sell real estate so thats pretty much all I take pics of haha!

Here are a couple of my most recent sale.

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Really nice shot, Ben
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I was trying to convince a friend that the D200 he bought from me was NOT a 5hi++y camera, and that all it
needed was a decent lens on it to shine. I sell DSLRs with a starter lens to keep the costs down and make sure
that they can start shooting right from the post office. And some people have even upgraded to a better lens at
the time of purchase. I told him that while he was right, the D200 struggles at high ISOs owing to it's age,
at no time should he ever believe his camera sucks. He wanted to do like me, shoot in bars at night. But
by the time he was ready to buy, all my D90s were sold, my D80, a few D50s, some D70s. I had a D40 and a
D200....that was his choice. I warned him that I was not selling him a 5hi++y camera, but that I was selling him
the best model I had LEFT. The price was right, so he didn't really argue until he couldn't get a decent shot off
inside a bar. I can only imagine what was going through his head then.


SO I took out the oldest thing I had, which happened to be a D100 I traded with Shark for, and put a nice
vintage Nikkor 50mm on it. I was confident it would do fine, and it did. But its easy to forget now that everything
has passed this model by, what a great sensor the early Nikons had. SO LARGE. SO FEW PIXELS. (really should
have performed better in low light, lol.) The lens really helped the photo appear to be higher resolution. Everyone
should know that you USE bodies and INVEST in lenses. This should make that clear. The pics are just testing shots,
but I was happy with the sharpness. The color and contrast could use a bump, but I did not want to edit these.

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More fall colors:

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Looks like I was there, Ron....this year however, I am going with a plan to have all the trees RETAIN
their leaves over the winter, then on one day in February, all the leaves can blow away at one time in a
far more organized manner. I might not even have to rake if it blows hard enough.

Everyone knows I love a cheap camera, but I recently found out the literal interpretation of a
concept I had read several times before and never grasped. I was shooting in yet another dark bar over
the weekend, and I had my ISO set to 5000, too high, but I needed the gain badly. I just bought a friend
a Nikon D3200 because he wanted badly to be able to shoot the same kinds of things that I am into these
days. I told him that was the best he was going to do for now, High ISO is expensive in current-gen cameras.
He lucked into this one for $225.

But he only had a D200, which might as well be blind at night. Great camera, feature-packed, but incapable of
high ISO settings. I had read Ken Rockwell saying dozens of times "this entry-level camera does not allow you
to adjust ISO in 1/2 or 1/3 stops." Ehh, whatever.....I don't even know what that MEANS to be perfectly honest.

So as my friend was struggling in this bar light, I told him to just go to ISO 5000 and his camera would be fine.
He said "I don't HAVE a 5000" I said "Sure you do..." and took it from him and only then, after years of reading
the same thing on all these cheaper Nikons, did I see what that meant. He did not have 4000, 5000, none of my
staple settings for difficult light. He had 3200 and 6400, and I knew that 6400 was going to be a noise-fest. 3200
and 6400.....not enough and too much. Thanks a lot. So I told him to hold at 3200 and be VERY STILL when you
shoot a pic. I realize now that was probably bad advice. But a man needs to suffer a few bad nights to understand
what his camera will do and what it will not.

Never having really BOUGHT a "cheap Nikon", I had no idea that all cameras did not have half and 1/3 stops
where mine did. That was a funny moment Friday night, when I finally saw the meaning of it all.
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Also, an interesting cactus inside of a conservatory:

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Colonel Mustard, with The Cactus, in the Conservatory?
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What would be your first Clue? :-)
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I realized I had put this in the bucket but not used it......good morning animal lovers.

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