A Tringford Lake Visit

It seems quite some time since visiting Tringford Reservoir, and having had a brief chat with its Water Bailliff, I decided that despite some occasional light rain, it was worthwhile travelling down as apparently they had been visited by a fair number of Egrets, a bird I have had less opportunity to record.

To get close enough to the activity on the lake I needed to be at the far end of the lake, and for that I needed to enter the woods over a bridge across the stream and make my way through to the shore with my heavy Benbo tripod and set up in the soft mud of the entry stream to the lake, and even then I would still need the 1.4x Converter and some further cropping later! Fortunately the EOS R with its extra pixel density handles this surprisingly well. And certainly in many instances that crop was quite extensive! Up till now I have shied away from using more than the 1.4x crop, but with this body and the Sigma Sports 60-600mm I have it attached most of the time. I will certainly be considering the 2x Converter because it would seem very good sense to use for wildlife and possibly for some Sports work.

As an indication of just how well this lens combo functions, the third picture in this gallery is a full-frame uncropped, and two frames further is a seriously tight crop, capable of an A4 colour print with great detail! Sigma have built a superb lens with fantastic capability which is a real joy to use, and the EOS R is making the most of its capabilities. The Benbo tripod supplies the necessary stability for use at the long end of the range, that I was pushing the envelope on this occasion. For most of the time I was operating at the maximum available aperture as well.

As a further indication of the sheer versatility of this lens, the shot of the mating dragonflies in frame 37 is also a tight crop at less than the full focal length at f/6.3, and that will definitely achieve a Super A3 print, and yes, I would have liked to have been closer, but knew that was simply not practical!

This camera and lens gives me so much joy in use, but it also makes me realise how much I need a more powerful Mac to lessen the post-processing time that invariably follows any outing I make when using the kit to its full potential.

My prediction is that for ultimate quality still images the next step will be a dual processor to accommodate both viewing and shooting as separate, parallel operations to allow for meaningful panning in Sports and Wildlife situations where currently these currently work against each other; my short term way of coping is to use multiple short bursts, but it is a compromise. What is life without a challenge?!