New camera + new lenses + day at the zoo = happy camper :)

I finally saved up enough $ to upgrade from my Olympus C-5050.
I ended up getting the XT, 17-85, 50 F/1.8 and 70-200L F/4.

...so I took the day off and went to the wild animal park.

http://webfiles.uci.ed​u …/wild_animal_pa​rk_081305/

I am a super-newbie-amature, so any comments/critique etc would be great . All but the wide angle desert scene were with the 70-200L. Next weekend I'll give the other lenses a run.

I ended up with about 10% of the pictures that I liked. Is that high, low or about right?

Personally I think the best thing to do is read this forum for a couple days.......It will answer a lot of your questions and make you ask a lot more questions......That's why we are here....

Hard to say really. I took a bunch of pics on Friday night (apparently) & lemme put it this way. I liked very much the pics I took before I started drinking, something in the region of about 85% to 90% & afterwards, I think my strike rate went down to about 5% of something even approaching average. Which I now have to explain to some cute girl (eh, not really sure how I'm going to talk my way out of that one... LOL)

Seriously, it's all a personal thing. One person's shocker can be another person's keeper.

Have fun with your new camera & so on, may you take all the keepers you can

10% is fine if you're happy with what you got. The ones you threw away were free (unlike film). As long as the one shot you really wanted came out OK -- and you can try that shot several ways to make sure and keep only the best.

some of your shots are really nice; I like the bighorn sheep.

Hi Gomer,
Welcome to the forum! Glad you are having fun with your new gears. I think the camera and lenses that u picked already give you a good start.
I am a newbie too, still learning wildlife photography. I can share what i have learned so far. I have scanned thru the first 20 pictures in your gallery and the lighting seemed quite harsh. Most of them seem to suffer from a little blown out highlight. This happens when you are shooting a dark bird on a white rock. So maybe you can try step down your Exposure Compensate to -1/3 or even -2/3.
When shooting picture like IMG_0029, i normally use fill flash, or increase my Exposure Compensation to +1/3 or +2/3 since the background is brighter than the subject.
So far IMG_0165 has the best exposure and composition IMHO.

I need to go grab some lunch. I'll look at the rest of your pictures after that. Happy snapping.