Wildlife: Heidi Chronicles: The Next Chapter, 1 by DreamOfSpring

DreamOfSpring wrote:
Tonight wasn't such a great night in Heidi land. The neighbors across the street had either a party or a lot of company. Having forgotten about that, I went out fairly early with food and treats and camera hoping to spend time with the kits and get some good pics. I EVEN went out and cut the grass at noon despite the fact that we are under an excessive heat warning with heat indexed temps in the 105-110F range so that I wouldn't have to do it late this afternoon and scare the kits away. Unfortunately, the evening was wrecked from the beginning because the sounds a people's voices and such coming from across the street kept the raccoons on edge. Some ran away immediately and other hid in the brush. Most didn't show up until after dark. Bummer, but, oh, well, it happens.

So I really didn't get any great photos tonight. But after the food and festivities (at my house) ran out, I decided to use the remaining time to try out some of what I've learned. Here then (and I have no clue who this is as it is one of the 'others') is a pic I took using what I learned in melody's class. (Hope you are reading, melody.) It lost considerable resolution on conversion from tiff to jpeg. Before the conversion the hairs were so crisp you could count them. This was taken in almost total darkness such that even after sitting out there for an hour or so I could barely make out the dark, hazy image of the raccoon. For this pic I used the S mode with what I assume was shutter speed set at 1/4 (second, i guess). Any lower than that and the camera gave me a yellow warning sign. I set sensitivity (guess that's ISO) to 400. I may have done this wrong. Probably need to review the manual some more to make sure I understand what I'm setting. I was trying for large ISO and small shutter speed for low light. Anyhow, it seemed to work considering (except for the disturbance of the white table) I shot this raccoon under roughly the same conditions as I shot Fraidy and Dennis last night (in auto mode).