San Diego Zoo
2012.09.01
Day Eighty Two. Hopped a bus (and then another one) over to the famous San Diego Zoo. I decided to bring the macro lens instead of my usual 28-300, sacrificing reach for speed, and boy did it turn out to be the right decision. I was able to "zoom by cropping" rather well. But, even with the 2.8 maximum aperture, I was burning the 6400 ISO pretty hard on a lot of these shots. There were still quite a few shots were I missed the reach of 300mm, but for even most of those, I needed the f/2.8 and the 300mm f/2 lens is something ridiculous like $6,000 and weighs several metric tonnes (or at least it'd feel like it did after carrying it around all day). And, I probably walked a good five or so miles (if not significantly more). I arrived early (well, early for me at least), but not early enough that the sun wasn't already blazing overhead. From which, most of the larger animals had already sought shelter, generally providing a poorly lit subject and an blown out background. Have I ever gotten around to mentioning my distaste for super high contrast situations? All of that aside, I had an amazing day. My only real wish would have to been to have better access to the animals so I could have gotten more unobstructed shots ... but alas, I didn't have a spare $1000 for the eight hour VIP tour. Oh well. They let me in for free (yay for the military discount) and for that I am most grateful :)
