A few minutes after 7:00 this morning, when I opened the front door to go out and get the newspaper, a fawn was standing casually on the front lawn.  It stared at me, but didn’t seem to be frightened or badly startled. So I decided to see if I would have time to grab a camera before the deer ran into the woods and out of sight.

I have several cameras available at any given time because of the camera guide books I write, so I had to make a quick choice. For this situation, I thought first of the Nikon Coolpix P520, mainly because of its long telephoto range. I made it upstairs and back down quickly with the Coolpix P520. This was a time to see how well Auto mode would perform. I knew I had a very short time before the deer would feel the urge to move on. I switched the mode dial to Auto and zoomed the lens in partway while aiming at my subject. The four images I managed to capture are in the gallery at the end of this post.

I took the first shot through the glass storm door so I wouldn’t disturb the deer any further with movement or noise. Then I opened that door and moved outside to see if I could get one or two shots with no glass in the way. When I went outside, the deer decided it was time to move to the neighbor’s lot, but I did manage to click off three more shots before it disappeared into the trees.

Obviously, these are not spectacular images. I just posted them as illustrations of how Auto mode can be a very handy setting to have available when time is limited.  They also are examples of how useful the P520’s great zoom lens can be when you need to capture an image without being able to get very close to the subject.