Over the past few months, a friend of mine has gotten into photography. He basically jumped in head first. Picking up a Canon R7, and a Canon 100-400 L. Very nice equipment.

However, he had to send the body back to Canon for repairs (the gamble buying from a pawn shop), and has been without it for a month. Suffering from withdrawals, he did the logical thing. Rent an R7 for the week.

And seeing how we both share a day off this week, we’re hitting the zoo for a shoot out. The only catch is, we live on different sides of a continent.

The Setup

My friend will be hitting the Denver Zoo, and I’ll be at the National Zoo in DC. You might be thinking, this won’t be the most fair shoot out, and you’d be right.

His zoo has more animals, mine has an indoor bird house, his has penguins, mine has pandas. You get the point. However, it’s November, that will help balance things out, as not all the animals will be out. And it’s supposed to be overcast at both zoos.

The Park With Animals

A drive and a train ride later, I was there. Turns out, the forecast was wrong, it’s pretty sunny out. That gives me an advantage¹. And I’ll need it, his set up is no slouch. So, I went straight to the bottom of the zoo, and started working my way backwards. Goats, bears, birds, more birds.

I ended up walking the zoo twice. Looking for anything I could get. Part way through, I sat down at one of the food courts for a bite to eat. A random old lady (with a camera) started asking me questions about my camera. She was amazed that the giant lens, was only one lens. We had a pretty good conversation about photography, and then went our ways.

I’m not going to lie. I was a little worried on the walk to the Metro station. My friend has good gear, and a good eye. What would he come up with. All I could do was wait, and work on my edits.

The Results

After a the day had ended, and the edits done, we sent our top three to each other.

My Photos

My Friend’s Photos

We both agreed that his flamingo took the cake. Hands down.

I would love to link somewhere to his work, but there’s nowhere to link to. I pushed him to start posting his stuff somewhere. His Adobe Lightroom plan doesn’t include their hosting service. If he does put a site up², I’ll edit a link in.

So yeah, this was a ton of fun. I’m definitely going to do some more shoot outs in the future.