Southern California Day-Trippin: 1/27/07 Test Shots

Thursday Don found a used Tamron 28-300mm, f/3.5-6.3 lense for my Nikon D70S. A lot is made by professionals of the quality of a lense being a primary factor in the clarity of the image...and in fact, an instructor at Brooks Institute of Photographic Arts and Sciences in Santa Barbara, who has long since retired from teaching (but doubtless---being rather opinionated, holds the same opinion he held in 1986), emphatically impressed upon his students that zoom lenses were inferior to fixed length lenses. I couldn't then, (and I'm not sure I can even now), actually detect a discernable difference between one lense and another simply by viewing a set of images taken from each, but back then Leica's and Hasselblads were all the rage with students and locals for their excellent optics (and the latter for it's larger format film as well). No one ever complained about Nikon and many professionals preferred them, so I always felt comfortably equiped with my Nikon (can't remember the model of SLR I had back then but it's claim to fame was a fast 1/400 sec. shutter spead--FE2? Yeah, I think that was it) and I'm still satisfied with Nikon--so why risk a different brand lense? Well, because it's compatible with Nikon's auto-focus cameras, it actually seems to be of comparable price (not always a reliable gage of quality I realize), we wanted a wide angle lense, and there's a 30 day return policy.

So this morning I took a couple of test shots in the back yard; Mr. Bunny and Merlyn, and a few hours later found Don and I at the Orange County Zoo at 1 Irvine Park Rd. (North end of Jamboree).
The zoo has been there forever I guess, and yet the only local zoo I've been to, or even known of, is the Santa Ana..and even that one has not seen my face in more than a decade.
Many of the signs claimed there were critters within the cells that were no where to be seen, but we probably hit it just after feeding time. They were doubtless sleeping off lunch in some rock crevice or hollowed trunk. If you wish you could see the cute critters up close and personal, the zoo opens at 10:00 am. Parking is $5.00 (on weekdays it's $3.00) and entrance to the zoo is $2.00 a person, unless you are 2 years of age or younger, in which case it's free (but you may never know because you can't read this). See http://www.ocparks.com/oczoo/ for further details.