Odds & Sods 2024

Excellent photos everyone.

The dragonfly, grey wagtail, coot sticking its tongue out, and others too numerous to mention, but a pleasure to see.

I should have done this some time ago, but I was too lazy. As I am now using my Sigma 18-300mm lens more, I should have swapped it onto my R7.

Thing is, I've modified the lens cap of both Sigma lenses to enable me to get camera up and photographing quickly without fiddling about putting lens cap in safe place. To that end, I drilled a small hole in the raised edge of each lens cap and attach a fine piece of string to it. Problem is, what to connect the other end to?

My Sigma 150-600 is easy, it's connected to the non-rotating front part of the lens. I wrapped the string around it.  My Sigma 18-300 presented more of a challenge. My solution was to tie the string to the metal loop on the camera body where the camera strap goes.

To take a photo, I simply reach round to front of camera, unlatch the lens and let it go. The cap hangs down, I take photos, and voila lens cap not lost or fallen on ground, which usually happens. The problem with tying the string to the body of the camera is that it is a pain to untie and then retie. My new solution is a completely Heath Robinson fix of tying the string to a safety pin (Yep) then simply clip pin around bottom of camera strap where it joins to the camera.

Yeah, I know. I'm a heathen. But it works.

I took my R7 with Sigma 18-300mm out for a trail run on our walks over the past couple of days. Sods law kicked in and nowt really appeared. Managed a few this morning.

Firstly, an easy one. It couldn't escape from me.

Yep, an Iris from my front garden.

The Memsahib insists on a rest, on a park bench in a small park (well, field) at the half way point. There a surprisingly large number of birds around - only a fair distance from where we are sat. One day I'll make like a complete tit and haul my long lens around. But for now, the small lens will do.

Putting my R7 and Sigma 18-300mm through their paces.

Magpie flying across us, a ways up the hill. The animal detection of the R7 did a good job of picking the bird out from a cluttered background and attempting to maintain focus on it.

Cropping out to exercise the extra 25% pixels the R7 gives me over the 80D, gives this reasonable image.

Still tracking the bird, which was getting further away.

Cropping again. I stopped after this shot as it really was getting quite distant, and all I could see was its rear end.

Some Jackdaws have been feeding on the field recently. Always difficult to photograph due to their dark colourations. I attempted some BIF shots. The R7 did its best, but the result was a little too fuzzy for a crop.

It did slightly better with this one.

Cropping out.

This time the bird was moving fast, and I didn't quite keep up. Though the R7 did rather well.

Cropping out.

The R7 and Sigma 18-300mm combination work rather well for long range shots. They struggled a bit with close ups; kept pulsing.

Now a Red Spotted woodpecker on my feeder, shot through kitchen window with R7 and Sigma 150-600mm lens. The tray the bird is clinging to is to catch peanuts. I made the thing out of 1mm square stainless steel mesh I got from Amazon. Cut square notch from each corner, bend sides up, smear acrylic mastic on edges of mesh to cover any sharp edges.

The rectangular tray does a magnificent job of capturing stray peanuts. Trust me, the birds manage to spill a lot of nuts when getting one out of feeder. Now 99% stay on the tray for other birds to pick up. It has reduced the feral pigeon population from 17 to none, as pickings are now almost zero. An added bonus is that rats don't bother coming around the feeder. The small amount of peanuts and other seeds that fall to the ground are immediately hovered up by Dunnock. Robing, Blackbirds, some tits, Magpies, Jays and our two resident Wood pigeons.

Saw these house martins by this puddle. Meanwhile a Buzzard came over fairly low in blue sky so I took the opportunity to photograph both. Have a happy Friday everyone.

super photo captures Mr K,   great to see the house martins collecting building supplies !   Very nice detail on the buzzard too, thanks for sharing. 

Fabulous photos Mr K, and nice to see the martins, such clear detail.

A mixed bag, on a sunny morning. Making the most of the sun as it is set to be gloom and doom and yet more bleedin' rain come Monday.

I should put this in the young of 2024 thread, but this one will do. A Moorhen feeding its young.

A daft duck on a perch.

My Canon R7 and Sigma 18-300mm combo works rather well. Though in fairness to my old Canon 80D, the R7 does have 25% more pixels, and its underlying technology has moved on greatly. I've also hit the limits of the Sigma 18-300mm lens, which is, again, old technology.

I read that Sigma are releasing some RF lens this July. Nothing with the reach of interest to animal photographers that I've seen. 

This Carrion crow, on a men's tee of a golf club through which the footpath we take passes. It really, really didn't want to be photographed. This is very odd. The upload dropdown stopped working. I discovered that I can drag and drop photos from my file system.

And now a subject that had no choice but to be photographed.

Final leg of our walk, about half a mile to go, when I hear interesting piston aircraft noises coming towards us from the south east. These two beauties appeared.

Cropping out the Spitfire. I looked this Spitfire up on google. It is a two seat trainer. - you'll note the canopy behind the wing. A Spitfire MK XI, built at the end of the war, it was never uncrated. Some time after the war, it was bought and restored. The markings are that of a RAAF squadron.

Both aircraft (the other is a Piper PA-32R-301 Saratoga II HP, apparently) banked to their left gracefully and flew off in a southerly direction - possibly to Farnborough.

Thanks Hazel. Appreciated. 

Thanks Mike. 

Some more birds at Ashdown Forest. 

male yellowhammer 

A pair of meadow pipits from a fair distance. 

Stonechat were out again and nicely perched.