Some of you may have already read this on the Ball Python Forum, but for those of you who haven't, here's what happened...

After over a month of being on a wait list my new Nikon D200 is here and I LOVE IT! What a fantastic camera! Now I understand why the wait list was so long on these! I pre-ordered the camera right before Christmas time. At that time, the camera hadn't been released yet and there was already a long wait list for them. So, I added my name to the list and the retailers told me that they expected a shipment at the beginning of January. They were released at the end of December and the only place you could get your hands on one was on eBay but everyone was SELLING them for $400 to $500 OVER MSRP. I refused to pay that much more than MSRP so I waited.

Week after week went by and still no camera. The place where I ordered from said they had received a couple of shipments but everything was going to pre-orders ahead of me (they had close to 100 preorders). One day I get a call saying that they were getting in a bunch of Nikon D200 kits and would I like a kit instead? Well, I didn't really need the extra lens but I decided to get the kit because the wait list was MUCH shorter on the kits. They come in and mine gets shipped out. YEA! Or so I thought!

The box arrived a few days later, I signed for it and as soon as I picked it up, I knew something was wrong. The box was empty! I could tell it was empty as soon as I picked it up, I just didn't want to believe it. I opened it up and inside there is some plastic packing material, a packing slip/receipt and that's it! NO CAMERA!

I called up the retailer ASAP and apparently, they made some sort of mistake and shipped me an emtpy box! This wouldn't have been a problem except now they were out of D200 kits as well because they had all been shipped out to preorders!

ARGH! So I looked around and actually found another retailer who had some kits available for the same price! YEA! So to make a long story slightly shorter, here we are!

These are the first few "test" photos I have taken with the camera and let me just say that so far, it is amazing! The photo quality seems much higher than the D100 and I can't wait to really get the hang of it! I also purchased the Nikon R1 Close-up Speedlight system which I used in conjuction with my Nikon SB-800. I find that using the whole system allows me to produce a softer looking photo (not as much harsh, bright flash bounce back) and therefore shows the various different colorations on an animal much better.

Anyways, here are a few photos I took. Let me know what you guys think. These pictures have been resized but NOT compressed to preserve image quality so the files are slightly big.

Thanks for looking!
Celia

Jungle Boa




Hypo Jungle Boa


Sharp Sunglow - I know there was some discussion about Sharp Sunglows in the past and about their coloration. I just wanted to share some photos of one of our females. This girl is VERY colorful with no brownish/burnt coloration on her at all.








Motley Boa






Aztec Boa




Snow Boa


And some Hypomelanistic Panamanian Boas - We picked up a trio of these from John Berry recently. These guys are really unique (check out those eyes!) and have the sweetest personality. We are really excited to be working with them. Thanks again John!








And for those of you interested in seeing what the FULL sized photos look like, here's one of the head shot above. Be FOREWARNED - this file is HUGE! I would not recommend clicking on the link if you are on dial up. The file size is 3.15MB!

Full Sized Head Shot

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Celia Chien
www.ExoticsByNature.com

2006 Boa Constrictor Morphs Calendar
2006 Ball Python Morphs Calendar

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