Well for those of us who cannot afford a $$$$$$$uper telephoto lens there's always the free library card. Pays to learn your prey and brush up on ones hunting skills. I have guided photographers in the arctic to shoot arctic wolves, and do have experience with observing animal behaviour. There's always risk, but it's a calculated risk.

And thank you for the compliment.

Yes the moose did see us..my wife was there too...the only nerve racking moment was when the calf, got curious and came up for a sniff...hard to shoo it away without startling the mother....the brief encounter was really quite an intimate moment, a comunion with nature, one of those zen things.

there are actually two shots of TWO different cows we got that morning. One by the side of the road, and one with calf in the woods.
I had gone to scout the area the day before, and found tracks so I knew where to look when we set off "hunting" at 5:00 am.

In and around national parks the animals do tend to develope a higher tolerence for people than in more remote locals. but ten feet is pushing it by anybodies standards!

Here's a couple outakes from that shoot:

Gerri calls this one: "Idiot chasing moose."




I call this one: "Bewildered moose staring at Idiot."

I had a busy weekend...Canada's Birthday an all.
shot moose...buffalo...fireworks...fire dancers and more.
got some up on the website if anybody's interested in seeing some Canadian wildlife.


more:http://web.mac.com/lightexpressions/iWeb/lightexpressionsphotography/Advertising/52E37A1D-798E-4798-AE05-28E5352FE818.html

a pentax 28-200, and sigma 400 served me VERY well on my mz5 for many years...and have recently been brought out of retirement for use on my ist ds2.
so I'd say yeah...but a couple primes may come in handy.
I always had a 50mm, 28mm, 85 soft focus and 28-70f4 on hand...never know when you'll want/need faster or sharper lens for specific shots....but for versatility and ease of use, few people would complain about the 28-200.

depends on the year..the earlier tamrons were better than the sigma counterparts..esp at close focusing....the Pentax is made by tamron but has smc multicoating...therefore the pentax would be best for the discerning pentax fan, as color, contrasr, flare control, etc will fall more in line with what you get with other pentax lenses.
my sigma 400mm always needs sharpening, contrast, and color adjustments to get to where my pentax 28-200 performs.

materials tend to expand when hot and contract when cold. I think variences in clearences of moving parts is to ensure the lens doesn't jam when cold.

and while you're learning, save up and buy FAST Cards! eg: I use sandisk cards. I have one regular and the newer Extremes...the Extreme cards read and write faster which allows the camera to clear the buffer when shooting in burst mode. two or three extra frames before the camera slows down in raw. the extreme card folds in half to expose a usb plug so no adaptor needed to dump images to my macbook with those memory cards.
1-2 gig cards (buy twice as many as you think you'll need).

I wonder if the trick for li-ion's will work with nimh's?
run'em flat dead and full recharge for two cycles every month or two to bring'em back up to capacity? I had that problem with a different brand digicam, almost threw out an $85.00 battery when I learned that trick...it's still in use today.
my duracell nihm's (2300 and 2500's) have had a year and a half of ridiculous use being drained and recharged at least twice a week and are still going strong.

Now I know what you guys are thinking...


but my wife was standing right behind me with her camera...(or was that a gun?) ...lol
pentax ist ds2, 28-200, ftz 500 flash.
f13, 1/50, iso 200 flash dialed-2 stops
after sunset.

I'll be composing a couple of multi media dvd and podcasts, one geared towards helping these girls start a modelling career, the other on how-to for novice photographers....

pentax spot meter
gossen luna six
polaris flash meter

in that order.
all can be found relatively cheap.
gossen and pentax may need to be calibrated.
and polaris, while not great in low light does do ambient and is a good value.
else your stuck with sunny sixteen plus bracketing.

might be best off getting a cheap slr with spot meter, just to get light readings with...if you tried that and transfered the settings from the 35 to the medium format and still did not get a good reading, your medium format may be brokeded...
:0(

you can find hotshoe to pc adapters at most photo stores..if your power pack uses higher sync voltages you may want to consider a "safe voltage" sync adapter (perhaps wein). you can use the built in flash if you power it down and have slave (or slave function) on your normans.
Then there's radio slaves (my personal fav)