t-con robins

[Sushigaijin]

It's a balmy 15f or so in Chicago, reasonably warm if you are a penguin or a polar bear. Bright sun and cold weather does one nice thing for me, it concentrates birds on south facing apple trees with very small fruit still extant. I visited a spot for an hour or so today (as much as my toes could handle) and played around with my new teleconverter. I am finding that, like most photography equipment, the teleconverter works best at moderate aperture and moderate focal length - wide open or clamped shut loses detail, as does ~700mm+.

I stayed in the 500-600mm range, varying aperture from f/4.5 to f/5.6, depending on the background. Shutter speed was pretty solid at 1/1000s, ISO200. Results were pretty good.

These robins were feeding heavily on the remaining fruit - they would perch on a particular spot of a particular branch, and then repeatedly fly to an inaccessable branch to grab an apple, and back again. At first I was mainly waiting to see if the cardinals I had seen here last week would show, but they didn't so I started shooting the robins. I didn't have a high percentage of in motion keepers, until I turned the image stabilization OFF, and got a few after that. In any case, here's todays submission:



This one I took in portrait orientation, so this is about 60% frame - still large enough to get a good 8x10, but maybe not much larger...





"Bye Bye for now!!"

[paulnj]

So why is it I lug an 8 pound camera around again?????

Nice capture on the last one especially

[Loupey]

That first one is great!

Looks like you'll great some great use out of that accessory.

You have snow too?! Seems central Ohio is the only place left without any snow this winter. North, east, west, and even south.. but none here

[Sushigaijin]

You have snow too?! Seems central Ohio is the only place left without any snow this winter. North, east, west, and even south.. but none here

Thanks, I think I'll probably wonder how I lived without the T-con in a few months.

As for the snow, what you see is what we got - about a half inch, which only stuck because the weather went from 35f to 20f overnight. Not exactly something to write home about.

on a side note, I DID see a peregrine falcon while out shooting these - just as I was walking up, before I even had my camera out :cryin:

Even with my (less-than) lightning fast reflexes, I only managed to get the camera out and on, not enough time to adjust settings, before it moved out of effective range. Might have worked if the jog dial had stayed in "M" mode, but it had been moved to some other crazy preset.

Wouldn't have made a good shot anyway, I only caught it as it passed over. Once it gets above freezing, they better watch out...

[Sushigaijin]

So why is it I lug an 8 pound camera around again?????

hmmmm, must be a masochist.

There must be a reason, because I too will eventually upgrade (I'm still in the doghouse for buying THIS one, no WAY I can convince my bride on spending six times as much on a body and two lenses)

[Bevb]

I absolutely adore Robins, probably my favourite birds alongside the Kingfisher, your Robins are quite different to ours, bigger and have more red but quite obvious a Robin family member.

Your images of your robin are wonderful, like most of your submissions, no favourites as they are all superb in their own right.:thumbsup:

[OBie]

I love these robin pictures. All our photogenic robins must have flown north for the winter. Very nice.