I Think He's Overcompensating For Something ...

The weather brightened up somewhat today, even if it was bitterly cold. All this meant I could go an play with my new toy!

The Sigma 150-500mm lens came yesterday! And what a beast it is ... I didn't realise it was going to be so big! I am sure it looked smaller in the camera shop window! I am going to have to have to put some weight training in now to build up the endurance to carry it around for a day!

I have to say, I am mighty impressed with it's performance!

The light wasn't awesome in the garden today, as it was cloudy, and I was only getting shutter speeds of about 160th to 200th of a second. The photographers out there will know, you shutter speed should be about reciprocal of your focus length, i.e., 300mm zoom should be shot at around 1/300th of a second, for a sharp image, even with optical stabilisation, you should really be looking for those kind of shutter speeds to be safe.

This photo is also at the highest acceptable ISO setting for my camera before the images become to grainy (and I have to turn them black and white), I hope you will agree, it's not bad at all. I can't wait to see how it goes with the Alpha77 when it comes!

I have put all the other photographs from today up in this Flickr set.

Another observation, especially about the ones shot from distance .. there was no trace of chromatic fringing, even on the ones with a high contrast background. Very impressive indeed!

Sorry if this blip has been a bit technobabble filled, but hey, sometimes I like to talk cameras!

Thank you for the awesome response to yesterday's new blip challenge, still no idea what I am going to do for A, hopefully see something over the next 48hrs whilst I am out and about!