I was pretty bummed out that I didn’t get to experience the shuttle launch. I had even rented a humongous lens so that I could take pictures of the launch. Since I didn’t get to use the lens for the launch, I decided to go to the Sacramento zoo and take pictures of animals there. It was actually pretty fun, even though the zoo was kind of small.

The lens I rented was the Sigma 50-500mm. It has a famous nickname, the “Bigma.” As you can see, it’s quite big and heavy.

The range of this lens is quite awesome. At the wide 50mm end you can get an entire giraffe.

At the 500mm telephoto end, you can almost kiss that same giraffe. Pretty insane.

The lens gets you close enough that you can almost pet a sleeping lion. Quite impressive.

So even though I didn’t get to take pictures of the launch, I had a lot of fun with this lens. At $1600, the lens is too expensive for me to justify buying it, but I’d love to someday rent it again for an African safari (or maybe even a trip to a big zoo like the SF or San Diego zoo).