Another day at the office

Kestrel

My photographer buddy Ken bought the Nikkor 200-500mm zoom lens yesterday. We decided to take it on a shakedown cruise up at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area today. It was a gorgeous day, not too hot, nice breeze, no bugs and lots of birds of all feathers everywhere. Absolutely delightful.

I am not sure how Ken did but it was a pretty crummy day for me, photographically speaking. Great day of living and walking, bad day shooting. Very few keepers.

I fought my equipment all day. It is okay, have had enough good days to not totally sweat the bad ones but I would like to figure out what is going on.

I shot the Nikkor 400mm f 2.8 off my Nikon D810. Shot it with the 1:2 crop between DX and FX.

It seems to be front focussing and I had a lot of soft images. I had it in sport mode on the vr instead of the normal middle #1 position but don't think that would cause my problems.

Hope I don't have to send the lens in for maintenance, can't afford it right now.

I did shoot pretty wide open, that could contribute some softness. I am going to fine tune the lens as soon as I have time.

Next Tuesday I will try again at Lindo Lake and probably go back to using this lens on my d7200, which has a larger buffer and longer reach.

We did see a lot of nice birds today, two immature bald eagles, many kestrels, red shouldered, red tailed hawks, a ferruginous hawk, harriers, shrikes, ibis, willets, avocets, white faced ibis, shovelheads, mallards, coots, egrets, mergansers, a red duck I am yet to identify.

I am happy Ken bought the lens, finally, he has spent a fortune renting them in the past and now I will have my friend and mentor to go on more bird shoots. Hopefully back to the Bosque del Apache one day.

Butcher bird

Did get a picture of a defecating duck, think it's a personal first.