As I walked by the kitchen window a couple of nights ago, I discovered I had a very large visitor in the field outside my house. I grabbed my camera and tiptoed outside to get a snapshot.

I walked up to him as close as I dared, and he watched me closely, but didn’t run when I talked to him. Just knelt down and continued grazing, but I could tell that he followed my moves in the corner of his eye.

I encounter moose quite often, but mostly they stand by the road when I drive home from work at night. Or they scare the hell out of me as they come bursting out of the bushes and run across the road in front of my car, leaving only a trail of dust and an anxiety-attack. Either way, they vanish before I’m able to stop the car, pull out my camera, -if I have brought it along, and get out of the car to take a picture.

So was it too much to ask of my camera to work properly when I for once had a huge moose only a few meters away, standing perfectly still, practically doing photogenic poses for me?

Maybe it was the night, dusk-like, and not quite light, or maybe it was the photographer, too excited to think about technical details. Whatever it was, most of the pics came out a blur, and I had to go out and talk to the moose twice to get these (miserable) shots.

His calmness surprised me. He just wiggled his ears and continued his business. Like he was thinking: Finally, a patch of green grass after gnawing on shrubs and bark off trees all winter. Do what you have to do and leave me alone.

My business is to get a better camera soon. I’ve had too many irritating episodes with my old camera, so now I’m aiming for a Canon 450D, which is probably the best I can do within my budget. With the wildlife just outside my door I want to be better prepared. Does anyone have any experience with this type of camera they would like to share?