Big Red Roo

Nice one. Good info on the kangaroos as well. I keep on going back to its face. The slightly out of focus background helps but still establishes the location.

Is Agfa RA4 still available in OZ? Are there any differences between this and Fuji or Kodak which make you prefer it.In the U.K. it seems to be only Fuji or Kodak.

The Agfa RA4 I'm using was bought when Agfa started to go missing. I bought up big on chemicals, to the extent I should be alright for about 2 years of colour printing.
I don't really think there was much between the three, much as I don't think there will be much between the two left standing.
Yes I had to use the 300 to do two things, differentiate the animal from the background, yet at the same time keep the background enough in focus to let me see the continuation of the background colours which are emulated by the colouring of the roo.
I tried a 400 but the background started to disappear in swirls of colour.
Interestingly, I also used a 600 (mirror lens) and that is so much better at isolating the animal and changing the picture like you wouldn't believe. I only have contacts of the 600 image, haven't enlarged them and don't intend to, they aren't what I really wanted.
Mick.
Ps:- do you have a name?

Thanks. The name's Mike. I have often wondered about a mirror lens. It's much cheaper, smaller and lighter but its fixed aperture at f8 and it's out of focus doughnuts have put me off. Mind you there was an article in I think Amateur Photographer recently where one of the professional photogs chose a mirror lens( Nikon I think) as his favourite. I have a cheap 70-300 Tamron but I suspect the quality of the glass is pretty basic but despite that I always think that I'd want to zoom to compose too many times to make the mirror lens worthwhile.

My son got a close up shot of a male kangaroo with a compact when in Australia so maybe it was in a park. It did seem tame. Anway what most non OZ people don't realise, me included until I saw the shot was how well muscled they seem to be in the arms.
Mike

Well when I was a youngster the travelling sideshows used to have boxing kangaroos as one of the attractions. The idea was for members of the audience to come up and try and go a round or two, against a roo.
The promoters were quite smart, they used to tell the poor unsuspecting audience members to keep advancing on the kangaroo. To my knowledge, the kangaroo (and related animals) are the only animal that cannot walk backwards, even a tiny bit. So by getting the roo covered left and right by the ring ropes, then having someone advancing directly, they would do what comes naturally to them, they start boxing, lean their head right back so their opponent cannot hit it if they tried, use their tail for balance. I never saw a roo lose a fight.
In the wild, male roos are constantly boxing each other. In the fifties, camping with the old man on rabbit shoots, we could often hear roos boxing each other in small clearings, sometimes we saw them, usually juveniles.
Yes their forearms are extremely strong, they can knock you out with a punch, if that doesn't get you they may use their legs to disembowel by leaning back on their tail, which by the way is also very powerful. The above kangaroo is taller than I am, I followed him for about 30 minutes as he was grazing, a few times when he heard something, he would stand up listen and look, which is exactly what he was doing when I took this picture.
Mick.