Wednesday, December 12, 2007

New toy!

Having spent the last 3 years whingeing about how crap my Sigma lens is, i've finally upgraded to a better model, a Canon EF 400mm 5.6 L USM, hows that for a mouthful.
It arrived this morning and after a quick visit to the doctors* I spent the afternoon out on the Top Fields and down at Portland Bill having a play with it.

The light was pretty shocking and there wasnt many birds around, but I managed to get a few shots off.

I'm pretty pleased with the new purchase overall. The faster and more accurate autofocus is the biggest difference. I probably wouldn't have got the magpie and stonechat shots below with the old lens. and its much sharper too.


Purple Sandpiper



































Little Owl

















Magpie















Pied Wagtail
















Stonechat




















* There seems to always be some complaint about the inefficiency of the NHS in the news these days, and not having been to the doctors for some years now I wasnt particularly looking forward to getting my jabs for my upcoming Asian trip sorted out.
I finally got around to making an appointment to speak to a nurse today, I rung the local surgery AT 11:25, was offered an appointment at 11:45, and by 11:55 I was walking out the door, having had the necessary jabs (Hepatitis A and Typhoid) and not a penny poorer fot it. Bloody excellent service I thought, although my left arm has been numb ever since, which is an excellent excuse for the poor photos above, now that I can't blame my camera setup.

Unfortunately I didnt get vaccinated agianst the deadliest insect in the world, the Hepatitis B, or against the most dangerous ocean in the world, the Hepatitis C, boom boom!

N.B: The above endorsement of the NHS has absolutely nothing to with the fact that my Mum works for them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Joe, new lens, lucky you! I have a Sigma 170-500mm lens and while it´s okay, I´m thinking of upgrading too when I can afford it, although I use a Nikon system, not Canon.
As for the NHS, I have no complaints either - although I´ve done my knee cartilidge in and when I get back to England it´ll be interesting to see how long I have to wait for treatment - and my mum also used to work for them.

Cheers
VB

Amila Salgado said...

Good luck with the new lens! Where in Asia are you going, if I may ask ?