On Saturday I went to the Oakland Zoo on a photo shoot I helped organize with a group of friends, many of whom were in the
joedecker-led class I helped organize last November: lrc, the_ogre, gerardp, and zahraa. Also joining us for this outing were boyziggy, zyxwvut, and cat_herder, the last of whom was our wonderful tour guide owing to her being a docent at the Zoo. I was happy we could coordinate a date that fit all of our schedules.I felt ill the morning of the shoot as I'd partied a bit the night before, it being the last day of my old job, but didn't think of bowing out for a moment. I was looking forward to finally using the Sigma 50-150mm F/2.8 lens my mother had bought me for an early birthday present back in January. I screwed on the Hoya circular polarizer I'd ordered with it, then quickly realized I wouldn't be able to adjust that filter while the lens hood was on. I could take off the lens hood to attach it backwards while not in use, but then I couldn't access the manual focus. Grumble.
As I wasn't feeling well I stayed in program mode for the beginning of the day anyway, but gradually moved into shooting full manual as I got more energy and more comfortable. I stayed in auto ISO the whole day though, which may not have been a good idea. It was very strange shooting in full daylight after four nights of shooting concerts in a dark bar. I did pay much more attention to the light meter.
I wasn't thrilled with how most of my photos came out and didn't have the mental or physical energy to devote as much time to post-processing as I would normally, but I did pick about 90 out of the over 600 shots to post to Flickr. My friends have blogged some shots too, so check them out.
