From left to right: Red-tailed Hawk, Golden Eagle, Bald Eagle

Top Row, left to right: Black-crowned Night Heron, immature Little Blue Heron, Black Bear
Middle Row, left to right: Female Timber Wolf, White Tailed Dear, Great Egret
Bottom, left to right: Florida Ibis, rocky raccoon, New England Aquarium

I met up with one of my cousin’s kids last night at a sweet sixteen party for his sister. He had a very nice camera, particularly nice for his first DSLR – a Nikon D70 – used, but in pretty good shape.

The first thing he asked me when I got there was why his photos were so grainy. I checked the ISO and was shocked to see it was at 1600 – the camera was configured for auto ISO and in the dark reception hall it had set itself to the maximum ISO – a great recipe for lots of grain (digital noise).

I undid the auto setting through the camera’s menu, explained why I was doing this, and reset it to 200, which would be fine for use with a Flash. I also noticed the picture quality was set to Fine but with the image size set to Medium – when he confirmed he did want to get some larger size prints afterwards I changed that setting as well – to Large. I also reassured him that he wouldn’t be taking 500 photos that evening, that 200+ (set to Large) would be plenty.

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Added some photos from guest photographer Zad’s trip to Greece last year (April 2006).
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View the first photos in the Greek Gallery here.