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Autumn Colour
This is one of my favourite albums.
Autumn in England can often be gray, damp and generally rather miserable. We had a wonderful summer this year and the good weather is continuing into mid-October. The sun was shining brightly in a almost cloudless, blue sky. So while my wife was out golfing yesterday, I took another trip to my local park, Kelsey Park, armed with the 10D, 135/2 and 1.4x teleconverter. I also took along my monopod, which I've been doing more and more recently. I'm finding that it really does help reduce camera shake, and is far less aggravation to carry than a tripod.
I'm really pleased with the way these pictures have turned out — apart from some grotty JPG compression artefacts. The colours are saturated and brilliant. And the 135/2 is just a wonderful lens
5 August 2009, originally published October 2003
Duck Soup
This is an assorted collection of bird pictures that I like.
5 August 2009, originally published May 2003
The Heronry
The heronry is one of the largest in the UK.
5 August 2009, originally published May 2003
The 300/4 LIS
Strictly speaking, it's not new — I got the Canon EF 300 f/4 L IS second-hand (or is that pre-owned
) on eBay. This gallery has a few of the photographs from my first outing with the lens to one of my regular locations — Kelsey Park. It proved three things: the lens is working OK and that I need to improve my technique. 
Also, the session showed how much better the big, bright viewfinder in the 1D Mk II is compared to my old 10D— much easier to manual focus.This is a selection from the incompetently low proportion of keepers. Most of the shots started as full-sized images and were downsized in Photoshop; a couple are cropped — the square one is almost 100%.
5 August 2009, originally published 1 March 2006
The Sigma 500
My wallet is not happy! I've just bought a new Sigma 500/4.5 lens… at a substantial discount courtesy of Sigma Imaging UK, but the net result was still a big hole in the pocket. I outsmarted myself and ended having to choose between wasting the best part of 500 quid (that's British pounds to those who wonder
) or paying a big chunk more and ending up with a new lens at much less than the regular street price. So I made the sensible choice. 
The lens was delivered on Saturday and I had to wait until Wednesday for some sunshine to make an excursion to my regular haunt, Kelsey Park.
This is lens is one big sucker: almost 14 inches long (350mm) and just shy of 7lbs — three thousand one hundred grammes!! It appears solid and well-made. It uses drop-in filters and comes with some kind of UV or daylight filter and a polarising filter. Auto-focus performance seems pretty good, but I used manual focus for the most part 'cos the camera kept picking on the wrong subject. This worked well and I'm sure with more practice I can become quite proficient, but I was glad of the big, bright 1D MkII viewfinder. I used my monopod and wound up the ISO so I could keep shutter speed up. There's a variety of shots in the gallery mostly — but not exclusively of the nesting herons and fledglings — including some with the 1.4x extender. Most are downsized from full-frame, but there are a few crops of assorted sizes. Image quality seems pretty good, though, not surprisingly a bit soft at 700mm, and I'm not sure about the bokeh. Still, on the whole, I'd have to give this lens a big
.5 August 2009, originally published 1 March 2006
Nesting Herons
This album is a selection from a visit to Kelsey Park at the end of January 2008. I was using my 1D Mk II with a Sigma 500 mil lens. This combination was still not sufficient to fill the frame; so I've made all these square crops.
5 August 2009, originally published 11 February 2008