New Hotness

I've jumped on the SLR bandwagon and splurged on a NikonD40. Today was my first day trying out my new scary and complicated camera. I have much to learn.


These are my first pictures. The slugs were taken with a high-power zoom lens with a Macro filter. The depth of focus is extremely narrow, and I was laying on the ground with my head in a shrub and not able to see through the viewfinder, so if you take a look at the full-size image you'll notice they aren't 100% in focus, which annoys me, but I guess that's okay because I was manually focusing anyway. But then, you can see the veins in this slug, and that's pretty awesome.


































I was really just thankful that I found the slowest-moving wildlife possible to practice on.
Also, I haven't been able to color/light correct these, as I don't have Photoshop anymore since my computer crashed. :( So these are all 100% un-retouched.


















































After going to the nature preserve, I went to Winco. Then there was a car on fire! I offered my camera services to the owner in case she wanted them for insurance or something, and I whipped my new baby out and pretended like I was a real photographer. It was a little scary, though, because at one point things were exploding in the engine. I was as far away as I could be with my zoom lens, but the images aren't 100% focused because I don't have an image stabilizer and no tri-pod, either. Pooh. And again with the manual focus.