New Camera

As I mentioned, I got a new camera.  What started as, "Hey, I'm just a guy in Long Beach taking pictures of birds with my iPhone," has changed to "Wow, birding is expensive."

But I love the new camera.

I was never happy with the first picture I got of a Great Blue Heron.  Today, I got home from work a little early and rode my bike over to the Regional Park (without the dog this time) to try out the new camera.  It's a Nikon D5000 digital SLR. (Do we really need to specify that a camera is digital anymore? It's a given, right?)  I got the Costco bundle, which included an 18-55 standard zoom lens as well as a 55-200 telephoto zoom lens, bag strap - the works!  Seemed like a pretty good deal for a novice SLR user.  Both lenses have auto-stablizers, which means I can suck and still get half-way decent pictures.

The first bird I came across was this heron.  It was at one of the fishing ponds, and was acclimated to people enough that I could get pretty close.

Here he is hanging out with a fishing buddy.

Great Blue Heron, El Dorado Regional Park, Area II fishing pond, taken with my brand spankin' new Nikon D5000 with the 55-200 lens.