I knew that I would be going to the NY Air Show with some friends and would need to use a long focal length lens. The last time I’d tried to capture aircraft in flight I hadn’t been particularly successful – and these were WWI vintage aircraft that didn’t move particularly quickly. This time there would be fast jet aircraft (AV-8b Harrier, F/A 18 Super Hornet, F-22 Raptor etc.) so I didn’t give much for my chances without some practice (or even with it for that matter). Anyway out came the Sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6 – The longest lens I own. Since this is a Sony/Minolta A-mount lens out too came the Sony Alpha 500 – a camera I’m getting to like more and more as I use it. Down I went to the dock where I’d seen a Cormorant standing on a rock on the lake. It was a good distance from our dock and I thought it would be a suitable subject – it wasn’t moving much and I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the lens without worrying too much about the movement.

I wasn’t too impressed with the results but I did learn a lot from the exercise:

1. I can’t handhold at long focal lengths. So out came an old monopod.
2. The monopod by itself helped but the pan/tilt head seemed to get in the way so I put on the ball-head from my tripod. This gave me much more flexibility while still providing stability.
3. This really is a sunny day lens. I took the pictures late in the afternoon and had to bump the ISO up to 800 in order to get a decent shutter speed. This increased the noise.
4. At 300mm the lens is very soft even at small apertures. 200m was better.
5. Using continuous autofocus seemed to work better than single shot. Even though the subject wasn’t moving maybe I was.
6. The sun was behind and to the side of the cormorant and it was difficult to get the exposure right. Spot metering seemed to help but even then the subject was often too dark requiring shadows to be boosted in PP and more noise.

So not much of a picture, but a useful exercise. We’ll see how I do at the air show.

This was taken back in December, 2010 with a Panasonic Lumix LX-3. But doesn’t the LX-3 have a very limited zoom range you may ask? And you’d be right – it does. This picture was actually taken in the parking lot of a Sams Store near where live. Garbage was strewn around and this had attracted this flock of seagulls. They were quite close to the ground and didn’t seem to have much fear of the people. As they hovered in the air just over my head it was pretty easy to capture a bunch of them – even with the LX-3. And aren’t seagulls supposed to be near this sea. This was taken about five miles from the nearest body of water (The Hudson River).

We took visiting brothers-in-law to the Chuang Yen Monastery and were watching people feed (despite a sign saying no feeding) the large numbers of very aggressive carp-like fish in the lake the other day when this medium sized snapping turtle put in an appearance. In the water he/she was outclassed. The fish were far to fast. However, the turtle had one great advantage: he/she could get out of the water, which he/she did and ate all the pieces of bread that didn’t make it into the water

Related Posts:

Chuang Yen Monastery – Exteriors
Chuang Yen Monastery – Details
Feeding the Fish

One of the comparatively rare (because I find it difficult to get a decent picture of her) pictures of our cat, Gypsy. She was sitting on the table right next to where I was working on the computer when some thing outside attracted her attention. Luckily I had a camera right next to the computer.