Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve

[Rose]

Sorry you're not feeling well Tom - there's a nasty bug going round which I had a couple of weeks ago Hope you and your wife get better soon.

Tina has bought the new 100-400 too and she was trying it out today
I still have my 70-200 f/4 - for me it has a completely different function to the 100-400 (it's a great portrait lens !) and I definitely have room for both in my kit.

[Rose]

Hi Rose
Thank you for organising a super day. I really enjoyed it despite my mishap. Thank you also for your tips and advice which are very much appreciated as I'm learning all the time.
Thank you also to the other club members for a lovely day.
Tina x

Hope you got home OK ! Glad you enjoyed the day despite your car problems. Happy to offer any advice I can... Perhaps a chat next time about using the custom settings ?

[Iggy]

I really enjoyed the morning out at the bird reserve with all of you on such a glorious sunny day.
Just been looking through my snapshots and I am very happy with a few that I will share with you sometime.
Perhaps I should have stayed for the afternoon session, but I was keen to watch Man U vs Man C which turned out to be a great match.
Additionally, I was able to get a few shots of mother and baby blackbird on their nest in our garden!

Thank you Rose for organising this outing and I look forward to going out on a few more this year.
Thank you Ron for the lift there and back which enabled me to watch the football.
Thanks Mike for offering to take me to the reserve.
Thanks to every one for being so friendly.
See you all on Wednesday evening,
Iggy

[Ronald Barker]

Thank you Rose for organising this trip. A very enjoyable morning.

[Mike Farley]

Hi Rose,

Sorry I missed your day. Both my wife and myself have been unwell for the past couple of weeks and going would have been impossible under the circumstances. I do hope the day went well and I look forward to viewing some of your images from your new 100-400 lens. Yes, you've nearly got me committed to buying one and hopefully it will perform well on my 5D. Like you will probably part exchange my 70-200 F4 lens to make room for it unless I find someone who wants a good general purpose lens in the meantime.

Kind regards,

Tom

Hi Tom

Sorry to hear that you have both been unwell. There is definitely an unpleasant bug doing the rounds at the moment and I know a few people who have gone down with itm myself included. Quite remarkably, a friend of mine had it earlier this year, but still went into work. I am not sure what it takes to keep him at home. An elephant gun at the very least, probably.

My own combination of lenses is the 70-200 f/4 and 300 f/4, plus the 1.4 extender which works well for me. The 100-400 is f/5.6 at its long end, which means that AF might not work with an extender as it is limited to a maximum aperture of f/5.6. With some more recent cameras, the central focussing point will function at f/8, but I do not believe that the original Canon 7D (which I use) has this capability. The 70-200 f/4 performs well and is much more compact and lighter than the 100-400, so I would be tempted to keep it for those occasions when you do not need the extra reach. Compared to the cost of a 100-400, you might find that the p/ex is not that great and your outlay might be similar if you are prepared to buy from one of the companies such as Hdew which deal in grey imports.

[toms]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your comments (and Rose). Taking on board a lot of advice I think you are both right about keeping the 70-200 it is as we all know a cracking little lens and a good carry-around.

I had considered the 300 F4 that you have as I was very taken with your wing walker images. I'll have a chat with those who have the new 100-400 before I make my mind. I have to make my mind up soon as I'm going to Biggin Hill in June and want to use a longer lens.

Hopefully this week should see the end of the 'bug' but as those that have had it know it has a habit of unexpectedly coming back.

Kind regards,

Tom

[Mike Farley]

I had considered the 300 F4 that you have as I was very taken with your wing walker images. I'll have a chat with those who have the new 100-400 before I make my mind. I have to make my mind up soon as I'm going to Biggin Hill in June and want to use a longer lens.

If you want to come around to my place, you are very welcome to try out the 300 once you are fit. If you recall my harvest mouse shot from the nature competition, I also used the lens for that as it focuses quite close; the resulting image certainly did not lack for detail. Conditions were quite dull, so I was also relying on the IS to keep things sharp as I could not get as high a shutter speed as I would have wished. I did look at the original 100-400 when I bought the 300 f/4, but overall felt that a prime to complement the 70-200 was the best option for me. Stories about the 100-400 being a "dust sucker" and the bearings in the push-pull mechanism failing did not help either, although I was also deterred by the 100-400's heft. YMMV, of course, and if the updated 100-400 had been available I might have come to a different conclusion.

Hopefully this week should see the end of the 'bug' but as those that have had it know it has a habit of unexpectedly coming back.

Multiple times, if my experience is anything to go by. It's always interesting, waking up each morning to see what the bug is going to do next, but lately it seems to have run out of options and has started repeating itself. Where's the fun in that?

[Mike Farley]

Some shots from the day. Although nothing much seemed to be happening at the Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve, when I got home I was pleasantly surprised at how much I had actually got, not to mention having taken more than 250 shots. Bough Beech Reservoir was attractive and the hide closer to what little action there was, although I have not posted anything taken there.

I have left the EXIF data intact if anyone is interested in my settings, but everything was taken on my 7D and 300 f/4 + 1.4 extender. Even then with a focal length just shy of 700mm at full frame equivalent, I have still had to crop quite a lot of the images. I started the day shooting with aperture priority and auto ISO, but I was not getting a high enough shutter speed. Switching to Shutter priority + auto ISO meant that the lens was always wide open. I tried to get around this by switching to manual to get the shutter speed and aperture I wanted and letting the camera sort out the exposure by leaving auto ISO on, but this meant that I could not set any exposure compensation which caused problems with blown highlights for the lighter coloured birds. In the end, I set everything manually and adhusted exposure by varying the shutter speed. It seemed to work.

This was some of the first activity of the day when a swan flew in.

Swan Flying

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Later on, this lapwing appeared.

Lapwing landing

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There were more Canada Geese around than anything else. This trio conveniently flew quite close overhead. Shame about the con trails, by the time we left the sky was full of them criss crossing each other.

Canada Gees in flight

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I quite like the effect of these seagulls flying around in the distance.

Seagulls

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[toms]

Nice images Mike,

Tom

[Mike Farley]

Nice images Mike,

Tom

Thanks, Tom.