Shooting a Kangaroo with the K20D

By PF Staff in Favorite Photos on Jan 7, 2013

My favourite photo must be the one taken with my first (3 month old then) DSLR, the Pentax (one and only so far) K20D on 9.01.2009 at precisely 18:41:51 AWDT Eastern Australian Time.

Why did I pick this particular  photo? Hmmm…… every time I look at it, brings a smile to my face and to everyone who has seen this photo. It happened on my first “DSLR camera shooting” vacation.

Going back to the cabin late afternoon from a long walk on the beach, I came across a group of kangaroos. As I started preparing and setting myself up to take some pics, one of them started going through some kind of  “digestive ritual”, that whole rather disgusting digestive action happened without any warning and I didn't have much of a chance to get prepared. Without much thought and in a bit of panic I started taking pics at continuous shooting, took some 20 pics and the smaller images below will hopefully show you how it all happened.

(Click a thumbnail to browse larger versions)

The lens that I had attached to my K20D was my favourite zoom, Tamron 19H (70-210) which I have used for number of years on my ME Super and Super A.

Though being my favourite zoom it wasn’t the ideal lens at that time as it was getting a bit on the dark side and I didn’t have a monopod with me. Having ISO at 100 didn’t help either.

I was forced to shoot hand held at maximum 200mm which would give me the kind of closeup/portrait look I was aiming for. As I mentioned above, having previously set ISO to 100, the quickest shutter speed that I could manage was 1/90 sec. with aperture at f3.5, Even though the conditions weren’t ideal, I suspected that there could be a chance for some keepers. Well, I suppose I was very lucky.

On arrival at the cabin, and after  immediately uploading to the laptop, I was pleasantly surprised and very happy with the result; and I still am ;-) I know it is not top notch quality but to me it is still a magic photo ;-)

The picture shown at the top is 100% original, in JPEG, without any PP so you can see how it came out. There is some room for adjustment / improvement. I only wish that I had set my camera to RAW, though I’m  not so sure that it would cope with continuous shooting, as well as in JPEG.

I hope that you enjoyed my humble little presentation.

Kind regards from Down Under.

- Greg (Gregs)