Now I Can See Those Dang Birds

One thing Lee and I did in Austin yesterday was get a zoom lens for our Cannon camera. It goes 150-500, and is pretty big but not ridiculous. We went to Precision Camera, a store I’ve patronized off and on since I moved here. I am glad they sell used equipment. New stuff is pricey.

The first time I went to Precision Camera it was a much smaller store near the current one. I went with Mary Jo, the school librarian at my kids’ school, to get a digital camera so I could put photos on the school website. We got the best we could get in 1998, since it was a new school and we had funds. This fine camera could take ten pictures on its memory card. Then you’d have to slowly download to a PC to clear out space. Getting even one photo per class was tedious (plus no photos of children’s faces—we had already figured that out).

I digress. The current equipment we now have holds lots more photos, and we download them via the camera’s wifi, which even our mid-level Canon camera has. So see, some things are better now. My goal is to get photos of birds that will look good enough to ID on iNaturalist. I have no illusions of becoming an art photographer at this point in my life.

Today was not a great day to try the new lens out, since it was misty and drizzly all day. The temperature only varied by 6° all day!

Even though it was a gray day, I took many bird photos, some with the phone, which also has a good zoom but not as many pixels. I wanted to compare.

The lens is heavy, so I’ll have to build arm strength. It has stabilizers, which is quite useful for shaky arms.

Mostly I practiced taking pictures of our Great Egret as it preened its damp feathers. It’s great to be able to see it up close.

On a sunny day I could do more, but I enjoyed trying different modes. I’m nowhere near able to manually manipulate settings. I’ll get there.

I look forward to seeing what I can do around the ranch. I get plenty of bird variety here! Maybe I can get better photos out camping, too. Identifiable ones will suffice. I’ll leave you with a few of my experiments.