Tired Tiger

This guy was having a giant early morning yawn.  The spectators had not arrived yet so I guess he's getting ready for the day.  It goes to show that being lucky can play a part in your photography. 

I got this shot right after the gates opened at Riverbanks Zoo.  Hardly any humans to be seen.  He looked like he had settled in for a few minutes so I put the teleconverter on the Sigma 120-400 after deciding to go for the super long shot.  With the teleconverter this lens combo becomes an f/8 - 840mm equivalent.  I had ISO set to 250 which is way to low for the available light.   I shifted to shutter preferred mode rather than my normal aperture preferred.  I dialed in 125th of a second which was underexposed but a least a full stop, maybe a bit more.  The warning lights are blinking in the EVF.  But thanks to the wonders of electronics I can see exactly how the image is going to look in the viewfinder.  And there is just enough light for focus peaking to work.  Keep in mind that even though the Sigma is an auto focus lens, the camera turns it off at this extreme focal length.  So click the shutter. 

This is one of those shots where you will lose some detail because of the lens and light constraints.  You are not going to get a technically perfect shot.  Pixel peeping will definitely show flaws.  On the other hand, sometimes the subject is just so awesome it doesn't really matter. 

In post processing I cropped the image down to my 23.7 x 22 proportion based the grid in the Japanese game of Go.  I did add some brightness, and worked the contrast in "Shadows and Highlights" and added a very slight contrast curve adjustment.  Not really a lot of work. 

A lot of manual adjustments go into a shot like this, but the EVF allowed me to be sure I had my parameters set up just right.   Will I go back to an optical viewfinder?  Never say never, but it seems like the dark ages to me.  There will be plenty of old people who resist change, but the newer generation has never seen an optical finder.  They are growing up composing images on their cell phones.  Electronic finders don't require a mental adjustment in their world. The future is here.  I for one am thankful.