I attempted to wake up early this morning, but that didn’t work out so well. So Aunt Rhonda left really early in the morning, which leaves me with an actual room and bed now. When everyone else got back from the airport, we went over to Vancouver and picked up the rental 400mm f/5.6, and proceeded to go to assorted parks looking for birds, with little luck. As a side note, in a rare act of foresight, I went ahead and picked up an extra 2GB CF card while we were at the camera store. Then we headed over to Ladner and ate at Quiznos (as it turns out, Quiznos sort of sucks) before heading out to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, which turned out much, much better. There were birds all over the place, with blinds and everything, and the 400/5.6 handled like a dream. Also of note, there were a lot of ducks. And I mean a lot. They’re none too graceful, either: I saw an awful lot of them crash landing whenever they took off.
As soon as we got in, we found this guy, my new friend the bald eagle, way up on top of a tree. He was way up there: even with the 400mm lens, that image is cropped in significantly. This meant not only that he ended up small in the frame, but that the angle was less than advantageous. It was really one of those situations where a 600 f/4 and teleconverters would come in handy, but I guess it worked out well enough: certainly better than it would have with my 70-200 f/4. I snapped away with him sitting up and moving his head around for a couple minutes, and then he got up and flew away.
We went on through the park, and ran into some assorted small birds, and also some bigger ones, namely the great blue heron and sand hill cranes. I got some decent shots of those, but they’re not terribly exotic, so I decided not to bother processing any for now. There is one of a smallish bird that I wasn’t able to identify below. Once again, it would have been nice to have a 600 f/4, as that one’s cropped significantly, but once again, it still worked out pretty well. Especially considering how light the 400/5.6 is. It’s sort of sad, I’ve been doing pretty much everything with my own lights lately, and I’d all but forgotten how to make the most of the camera’s built-in meter and on-camera flash. I’m happy to say, though, that I’m getting used to it again, and with some good tripod technique, I’ve been getting some results almost as good as what I get with totally controlled lighting and still subjects (did I mention that I cropped all the bird shots in this post?)
So we left there, with plans to go back tomorrow morning. After that, we picked up some big prints of our hosts’ new granddaughter that I made from Costco, got a frame, and surprised them with it when we got home. They seemed mighty pleased, and I even got a “You’re making me cry,” with a big smile, of course. Then I went for a run, came back, did some shadow boxing, dinnered, and set up a still life of my new old camera, with the nice old-looking hardwood floor in the room I’m staying in (that’s the photograph below). After that, I just watched some TV, put some batteries on the charger, and settled in to write a blog post. I guess that’s the end for now, hopefully there’ll be some great new bird photos tomorrow.
