My First 400L shos..

I managed to get out to the local prairie oday for about 1.5 hours. Within 5 minutes of getting out of the car I was stood about 40 feet from an hawk (I think?), there was a lot of branches in the way though, and it flew off when a runner passed by. I managed to follow it though and got some good shots - for me. This was the bird I could never get with my 70-300. He seemed to pose for the 400L, so I figured it out, with the 400L birds fly to you rather than you needing to stalk them. I think I missed focus on the guy a little, but for my first day I was real please. After getting about 20 feet from the hawk for a while he flew off, I was oo close and out of memory to get any shots of that. I then came across a regular sparrow (I think) again he saw the lens and hopped towards me, then a woodpecker, he flew over to get in on the action, then it was the turn of the deer and squirrels. Amazing.

Not the best shots, but gave me encouragement to get out there with the baby again tomorrow!

I love the lens. All taken with no TC, slight cropping on the hawk shots, more so on the sparrow and even more on the woodpecker - couldn't get a good view of him...









Cheers
Jonathan

--

'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in
to the sea.' - Eric Cantona

http://robsonj.smugmug.com/

--

'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in
to the sea.' - Eric Cantona

http://robsonj.smugmug.com/

all really good but that last one knocked my socks off....

I just got the 400L recently as well and I still have yet to get a shot that nice.

Heres a few of my better shots:









--
Gregory A. Jackson

I think I had a lucky day, I was only out for an hour & a half, I saw four raptors, if I'd have had more time I may have been able to get more shots, saw another on the side of the road on my way home. You're shots look good to me, looks like you got closer to the woodpecker than I managed .

Here's another who's exposure was way off, I managed to save it (IMO) in Apple Aperture...



Cheers
Jonathan

--

'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in
to the sea.' - Eric Cantona

http://robsonj.smugmug.com/

Super shot! A sure keeper.

If this cold spell ever breaks, I might get out and shoot some (snow?). I'm enjoying my new 400 too.
R2

--
*
You are free to offer critique of any of my images.
Editing and reposting them on this forum is permitted, and even encouraged.

http://www.pbase.com/jekyll_and_hyde/galleries

Isn't this lense great. Of course we had good light today but I found the quick focus of this lense to more than live up to the hype. I'm so glad I got it. I used a tripod for most all my shots today, how about you. The eagle shots I got more than lived up to my expectations. As long as I'm on the tripod I think I'll get along without the IS fine. Are you still going eagly hunting Sunday? Good luck! Bob

Heres my shots today.







last week 70-300IS

Yeah I got one of them little suckers too.....just a week or two ago....



having a BLAST !

--
Gregory A. Jackson

Great mid air squirrel shot! Did you shoot in RAW ? if you did you'll be able to recover this a bit more.

--
http://www.pbase.com/dambler

Those are nice shots!, I did go eagle watching and snowy owl hunting today. We didn't see the Snowy unfortunately, but saw about 75 goldens. They were quite far off (@ Starved Rock IL), so this was about the best I could do. Note of interest was that the lighting wasn't great and they were all taken with the 400L + Kenko 1.5 TC. The TC seems to make no difference at all to AF speed, I was pleasantly surprised. Slight degradation of quality though I thought, but then its easier to see such things in lower light, higher ISO shots like these...











Closest we got to a snowy ...



There was a guy with us who had the 500mm... and I thought the 400mm was a long lens

Cheers
Jonathan

--

'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in
to the sea.' - Eric Cantona

http://robsonj.smugmug.com/

Hi There,

It was shot in RAW, thats my main weakness with photography, I'm hopeless at post processing, same deal with the golden eagle shots further down, the minute I touch them with photoshop they just end up looking terrible, so I stick to basic levels in Apple Aperture and thats about it :-(. Any advice?

Cheers
Jonathan

--

'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in
to the sea.' - Eric Cantona

http://robsonj.smugmug.com/

I stepped out my slider to catch this red shafted flicker eating ivy berries in the rain HH_ISO 800_1/320 sec. I really didn't expect anything but every now and then you get surprised at what you get.



Here is the male the next day in bright sun light.



I've had my 400L for around a month now it really makes you want to get outdoors.

Lets try that again a little bigger this time