xiphmont

The local mockingbirds have fired up the springtime brood-vats, and I was surprised to hear fledgelings begging for food yesterday.

I was pretty sure I could hear three of them, and finally managed to catch the whole brood in one place (otherwise, not a great picture).

This also afforded some opportunity to practice driving stick on the camera (handheld shooting a manual focus long telephoto)!

In general, the challenge is what you'd expect-- the lens is slow, long, and prone to serious purple fringing unless stopped down to F11 or so. Pretty much what you'd expect from 35-year-old optics. There's not much point to even trying to get off a shot slower than 1/200 or wider than F8 (PF wasn't really under complete control until F11). I got lots of feeding shots, all of them wanted to be much much faster-- they're mostly blurs of feathers.

Other than that.. yeah, it's not a bad lens for $50.

Oh! Right! Birds! These little guys have been running the parents ragged for days.

SO! FLUFFY!