Another recent wader encountered whilst out with the geese was the ruff. Five birds spent a good half hour picking up the swan feed towards dusk and it was interesting to note the very different stages of plumage from wintering adults to juvenile birds. It’s the leg colour that varies more than anything and is pretty well emphasised in these images.
Hi Tim ,
Enjoy your posts very much , the quality of your shots are very good . Would appreciate details of lenses used – are you using Sigma telephotos ? My email tells you I am a Nikon user , the cost of Nikon lenses are quite prohibitive , so would appreciate your comments and experience .
Regards , Terry
Hi Terry,
Thanks for your comments. I use a variety of lenses depending on the situation. The shots of the ruff and the recent geese images were all taken with the Sigma 50-500mm. I recently added it to my kit for a number of reasons, not least being that after a series of major operations I simply can’t manage to carry the fixed 500mm nikon lens miles and miles. It also allows for working with the context more, something I’ve been exploring of late. I also enjoy having the flexibility in one lens to play with composition and framing much more.
I’ve found it a pretty good lens, although when possible I’ll use the fixed 500mm. I had to send the first Sigma 50-500 back, however, as the edge definition was seriously poor. It must have been a faulty one as the one they returned was fine. (so well worth doing a test) It’s still a little soft on the edges at the maximum focal length but I guess you’d expect that on a lens that’s considerably more affordable than the Nikon lenses. It has a ‘sweet’ spot, somewhere around f8/f11 but as you’ll know it’s not always possible to get onto such settings. Fully open though it’s fine and I’ve been happy with the results.
Hope this helps a little and thanks for following the posts.