The leaves are off the trees and the squirrels are plump and active, foraging for acorns to bulk up for winter. It's too cold to sit outside at Fat Dan's and wait for neat cars to drive by, but primo squirrel-spotting season, and that means it's time for longer zoom lenses on my walkabout cameras.
The upper photo was shot with a ten year old Nikon D7100, wearing a 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom. (The best all-round DX Nikon zoom, period.) The 120mm equivalent long end on this lens makes it a little short for optimum squirrel spotting. The little dude upside down on the tree trunk was only a dozen or so feet away, but only the 24MP resolution of the D7100's sensor allowed me to crop it down to something useful.
The photo below was shot with the 2004-vintage Nikon D2X & 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II combo. That extra focal length helps, as this photo didn't need near as much cropping, even though the squirrel was twice as far away.
