Musk Ox exhibit zoom test - PASSED!

[meriones]

With the holiday I wasn't really expecting my new camera to come until later in the week. Pleasantly surprised to have it arrive yesterday, which meant I could bring it to the zoo for a test drive! I knew the ultimate test of it's zoom capabilities would be the zoo's musk ox exhibit.

I don't have an unzoomed view of this exhibit handy, but anyone that's seen it knows how impossible it is to view the musk ox. The exhibt is, I believe, close to ten acres in size, probably half of that space being a lake on the front half of the exhibit. So that animals hang out behind the lake way up on a hill super far away. Photo above is from my new camera with no cropping. Yeah, that zoom will definitely come in handy when photographing the bison and other wildlife in Custer State Park.

Definitely needs a tripod when zoomed all the way in if I want large crisp images. Obvious it looks fine resized for the internet (yay image stabilizer!), but when viewed at 100% there is a little bit of haze around the edges from camera shake.

At the three o'clock birdshow a wild turkey randomly ran/flew across the stage during the red jungle fowl segment. And they actually had to acknowledge the rats today as one stayed out on the vine and Laurel had to go and lift it up into the opening in the wall. Kinda wish Dave has been doing this show just to see how he'd play with all the little surprises.