Very Brief Visit to Weston Turville Lake

I was due to have lunch with my younger daughter at Quainton, but not too early, as she was in need of some quality time with her two youngsters who were hopefully coming to the end of their coughs and sore throats. Since I had woken early and was ready to go out, this suited me, since the sun was shining, and the time spent at a lake with a camera was equally good for my soul.

Having not visited the lake at Weston Turville for some time, and it being in the same general direction as Quainton, this was very welcome; also, an added benefit was Lizzy knew how long the journey to her would take, so when she felt that her roast, potatoes and vegetables would be my time distance away, she could simply ring me, and I would pack up and be on my final leg of the journey.

Despite there being almost no wind, there was a gathering of dinghies on the farther shore, with just a couple beyond the confines of the harbour, there were a fair number of swans, a few, scattered Coot, and a young Grebe, also there were several small groups of gulls, mainly on the water, occasionally taking short spells in the air. I had assemble the camera and lens on the Benbo tripod by the car, just beyond the entrance; a thoughtful soul had kindly vacated his or her slot very close to that entrance, which meant I was spared a long walk from the farther end of those parked cars. A few dog owners were heading in and a lesser number coming out with their charges as I set up my EOS R, the 2x Converter and the Sigma Sport 60-600mm onto the tripod, then headed for the entrance myself.

I had assumed from the number of parked cars to find the bank and paths crowded, but obviously the lake and woods are large enough to absorb that number without more than three or four groups being visible. It took very little time before I began shooting, and rather than the native wildlife, it was the somewhat pedestrian sailing dinghies that were my subjects as they very slowly made their way out from their moorings, I felt their sadness that with this sunshine there was barely a whisper of wind — a mere zephyr!

Meanwhile the Grebe was inching slightly closer, but still little more than a speck at the full extent of the lens’ range, meaning it would be well-cropped within the frame, even with my 2x Converter! It is here that the EOS R shines, in that with the sunshine on this occasion, even with such a crop, the quality of the image is still good. Even though now the Sigma is invariably linked to my 2x Converter, I find I can still focus close enough at the 60mm end of the lens with the Converter on when as happened a Coot swam into the ban below me, and gave himself a good shake, without being chopped in any way.

One fascinating group of shots occurred when a small dinghy with an outboard came towards me then returned to the boatyard making some wonderful interference patterns on the surface, and behind me a Dad and son were cycling when the chain came off and Dad stopped to pop it back on whilst the lad ran up and down the bank, as Dad settled down to pop it back. Not long after I got my Dinner gong from my daughter, and headed back to the car, and an excellent roast ham and all the trimmings, rounding off a great day.

Marston Lake – Life Mainly Tiny

I suppose here I share the interest I remember the young Gerald Durrell found so fascinating but, he found that on the far more exotic Greek island of Corfu, bathed in warm sunshine for a large proportion of the Mediterranean year. On this warm English Summer Day, I had driven but a short distance from my home and entered a secluded lake given over largely to the sport of angling. 

The relentless passage of Time was very apparent, for where just a week back water-lilies could be found in bloom, now it was almost as if they had never been in this spot; there were but a low single figure left, and in poor condition, but I only learned that later when I ventured to the far side of the lake. On this visit, I spent time in the second or so Swim where in a preliminary walk I had seen some activity from dragonflies and butterflies. I tried to see whether the extra flexibility of working from a monopod might be viable.

I persevered for around fifteen minutes before I realised that with my heavy long lens, this was wishful thinking on my part, so leaving aside my monopod and flask, I returned to my parked car and fetched my sturdy Benbo and the Acratech Long Lens Head and, though I did occasionally lift it bodily aside to avoid intervening reeds from my subjects, I spent most of the time in the shade of an overhanging tree with a good view of dragonfly activity close by the water’s edge. Apart from the obvious stability advantage, the relief came from the vast reduction of weight and less waving around!

It is always fascinating to watch- Water-Boatmen walk on water, though the is not strictly true – they jump, but the semi-religious analogy is still apt for the ease with which these insects travel across the water surface. I was able to capture this in some detail on this occasion due their  comparative closeness and the use of the 2x Converter on the 60-600mm lens. I also switched away from autofocus in order to keep up with both these creatures and the Dragonflies, with a subsequent improvement in my overall success rate!

I have never given up attempts to capture insects such as Hoverflies, Dragonflies and Butterflies in flight, and on this occasion was extremely lucky to be rewarded more than once with some success! As the sun eventually left this location in shade, I packed up my kit and visited a few other spots , but with less success; I had managed to get the most out of my trip, and the shaded light by where my vehicle was parked tempted me to take a couple of shots of the car to conclude.

Brogborough Lake Drop In

Thank you for a Rivetting Note to me, Barry, in Comments, for pointing out my unforgivable error in naming the file incorrectly, rendering it unavailable for those eager to see how Hydrofoiling is progressing on Brogborough Lake; I hope it was worth the Wait!

         On the spur of a moment,  I decided to see whether anyone was taking advantage of the wind at Brogborough Lake, and found that Sam was once again trying to master a gybe whilst keeping the board aloft, clear of the water throughout the manoeuvre. I spotted that he was successful on several occasions. I later learned he was generally successful in one direction, but was finding it difficult in the other. 

         There were others on the water, but I’ll apologise straightway, that  I was more interested in capturing a complete sequence of a successful gybe whilst clear of the water throughout whilst using a hydrofoil board.

I was a late arrival, so missed some of the earlier action, and so there is not a lot to show but I also slipped up by thinking that since the action was reasonably close to the shore I could dispense with the 2x Converter, but I found that I was mistaken, so also lost some time in having to return to the car to bring out the Converter. Once that was in place, the shots filled the screen far more fully.

I hope that the shots I took were useful for Sam; I learned that keeping the 2x Converter on permanently for shots here was definitely worthwhile, as it made all the difference, with no downside, and confirmed I made the right decision in upgrading from the 150-600mm Sports lens to the 60-600mm Sports lens. Certainly using this lens on the Canon EOS R body I see no downside on keeping the 2x Converter on at all times, unless the light levels are seriously low. The same would not be so when using the 5D III or 7D II as the EOS R’s file size is greater, offering higher ISO cleanly. Having a sturdy tripod is another benefit, especially when shooting the windsurfers, as it invariably means that whilst the participants are using the wind, I am fighting it! Ironically, also I find myself hankering after a dark cloth to improve my screen viewing.

Not My Initial Venue - a Lone Hydrofoiler

My camera gear was in the boot of my car, and due to the direct route to my intended destination lake blocked, My route took me past a familiar venue, Brogborough Lake, home to the Windsurfing fraternity, so I slowed to see whether it was full of sailors — it wasn’t but I spotted that there was at least some activity on the water, so I pulled in.

I recognised one familiar face out on the lake, and he was foiling, so fickle as I am, I opted for staying to see what I might capture, since the wind was reasonable. I duly set up my camera together with my Sigma Sports 60-600mm lens on the Canon EOS R body. I forgot to mention that the original reason for this venture was that I had been lent a 2x Converter by Sigma, and it had arrived this particular afternoon. So my camera was already assembled with this attached, and since the first subject, a Woodpecker at a different lake was to have been my initial quarry, that was where I was initially headed, however, the pull of a windsurfer new to foiling was out there, so like an addict, I found myself unable to resist the temptation to change the venue for my test.

I will apologise to others on the lake that on this occasion, that Geoff, a neophyte to hydrofoil windsurfing was the ideal test subject this time around, as with this Converter my lens becomes 1200mm, and on the mirrorless body becomes a real challenge for panning fast moving subjects, and Geoff is no slouch when it comes to speed, so was destined to give me a real challenge, and I definitely need the experience as it is very different from a dSLR, but as I have already found with the EOS R, when I get it right the quality is superb, but it has yet to become second nature for me, so it is I who am the newbie! But I do seem to be getting there!=

Marston Lake Afternoon Visit— Mainly Dragonflies

This trip was made for yet more checking into how to get more out of using the mirrorless bodied EOS R with a long lens and fast-moving insects, in this instance Dragonflies and Damselfies. I have yet to use Sigma’s USB Dock to set up targeted focus zones to facilitate minimising focus travel into some presets — to do that I need to know precisely the distances that would prove beneficial, so I need to decide that from more usage. Another aspect is how to set up the focus point within the frame; it is all too easy to knock it off to an edge. Typically, if I set it using the playback screen and placing it with a finger, my nose can accidentally disturb that setting!

Also, since my time was limited, I opted for using a monopod, rather than a tripod, to give me the facility to move quickly as the sun moved around, and that at least did work acceptably, though it was tiring with such a weighty lens as the 60-600mm as well as the 1.4x Converter. Incidentally, using this is really a boon due to the extra range of this lens, especially when the subjects are small — it would be very limiting had I tried leaving the extender permanently on the 150-600mm I used to have. That 60mm end makes using the extender far more valuable.

I put the Acrotech Long Lens Tripod Head atop my Manfrotto Monopod to give me as stable a platform as I could to use the monopod, and that was a really good move as it made it fairly easy to adjust the balance of such a long lens on such a light support. Also using the higher ISOs with this mirrorless full-frame body meant that the freedom I chose was not disadvantaged by excessive Noise. To hammer that point home — the tightly cropped (2451 x 1634px) image _N3A3042 was shot at 10,000° ISO with an exposure of 1/1000sec at f/10 with +1.3 EV compensation — that just blew me away! So far, I do consider myself a total novice in relation to mirrorless camera bodies, but this is proof that I should persevere.

Two of my esteemed colleagues moved to mirrorless way before me, and I have some catching up to do, and I admit is hard to lose shots in the interim that I knew I would have got using either of my DSLRs, I will persevere because shots of this quality simply were not possible using those bodies. So ‘onwards and upwards’!

10,000° ISO, yet with manageable noise levels seems unreal! (Oh, by the way, that shot is of a pair of Water Boatmen).

I did learn another useful and not totally unrelated snippet following these fast  and adept masters of powered flight, ‘Don’t try to follow them at the longest focal length, give myself a chance by coming down, so I have more to learn in the new world of mirrorless! I also tried chancing my arm at manually presetting a distance, but since I practised that at the end of my short stint, and the sunlight had gone behind clouds, so that had little chance of success, but I will not be defeated! And the time was therapeutic — I had had frustration with the computer, and needed to get away!

Marston Lake Surprise – Greater Spotted Woodpecker!

Despite the forecast suggesting showers, the clouds were generally high, and though billowing, seemed to be slow moving which gave me the impression that rain was far from imminent, and the rain from the previous night was being burned off in the sunlight.

I decided that I would drive to the nearest lake just beyond Millbrook Station to see whether I might see the Grebe I had last seen searching all around the lake calling seemingly plaintively, for his lost mate. However, not only were there were no Grebe, I saw no birds of any sort on the water at all. I drove clockwise from Swim to Swim to view the reed beds from all angles, and stopped to chat to some of the anglers in the hope they could  suggest where they might be, and learned that an Otter had been reportedly been seen which may have spooked the birds. One angler I met also shared my interest in photography and I learned from him that he almost always had his camera to hand, and been very lucky over the years with what he had captured.

I met up with Water Bailliff, Mark as we both headed around to the far side of the lake, and halfway around caught sight of a Mallard couple in the distance, and finally arrived at the last Swim and Mark and  

We both the heard the characteristic tapping of a woodpecker which appeared to be coming from a stand of bare trees not too far from the last swim on the short leg anti-clockwise from where the entrance road branched to right and left. It was certainly a long shot to consider that I might spot him, especially as the trees were still a good distance from the farthest one could go in that direction. The only plus point was when we were on that far side the woodpecker’s tapping seemed to be coming from the end trees closest to that last swim.

I should not have been so pessimistic, because, after arriving by the swim, the tapping resumed, and eventually the woodpecker came into view and with not too much intervening cover! I had by that time had the camera and tripod all setup, like a good Boy Scout, and felt rewarded beyond my wildest dreams, this was the first time I had been lucky enough to be getting shots of a woodpecker! I moved my tripod onto the small jetty to get the best uninterrupted viewpoint and got a reasonable number of differing shots whilst it preened itself interspersed with a brief bit of leisurely tapping every minute or two. It finally moved out of sight around the tree, and so my privileged viewing came to a close. I was thrilled.

Brogborough Windsurfers – EOS R, 60-600mm Lens + 1.4x

For those windsurfers hoping to see what I had managed to capture, I apologise for the delay, but other priorities occurred, and also I learned a hard lesson, bigger files, especially without a fully compliant profile with which to process them, also adds to the delay. The files are now over twice the size, so when you also add into the mix that I have yet to be able to understand just the best way to process the subsequent files, it has taken me way longer to prepare the gallery.

In the recent past, I have used the smaller-chipped 7D MkII to both gain the extra throw of the lens, and to maintain a high burst rate when shooting the Brogborough windsurfers and the Stewartby powerboats. On this occasion, I was using the full-frame EOS R, and to give me extra focal length using the new much longer range of the 60-600mm Sigma Sports lens, I added the 1.4x Converter. It had the effect of making the 600mm become 840mm and in place of 60mm that was now increased to 84mm; which was not too bad a loss when the windsurfers came close – compared to the closest focus of my previous 150-600mm used alone which meant if my subjects came close the cropping was obvious. On this afternoon I had little difficulty keeping the whole sail in frame when I was approached closely, yet equally able to get a good size when they were a good distance away!

I still have to find an effective solution to placing the cursor where I need it for both autofocus and exposure, so that I can vary the focal length to achieve effective framing and composition. Getting the ring that provides in my instance the means by which I can make quick changes to exposure compensation was essential to give me the level of control I need to work efficiently and speedily.

I apologise to those who feel there were too many shots of Sam and the hydrofoil board, but I was trying to see whether he might complete a successful gybe aloft, and I was impressed he was getting close; I think it was as much due to the fickle wind conditions. I was pleased to have captured some shots of multiple sailors spanning the width of my frame, especially as now the quality details of the individuals in such frames is so much better. I did not stay as along as I might have, because I knew I had little available time to get this gallery up, and now it is late Tuesday as I write this narrative to get the gallery up tonight. I hope it was worth the wait.