First Visit to Stewartby Lake, 2020

         I noted that there was some wind and at the time I made this observation, the sun had burned through the overnight mist, so though rather late in the day, I decided it was worth taking a look at the boating lake with its sailing dinghies and catamarans.

         Initially after parking, I locked the car and went to take a look at the activity on the water, and was pleased that there were several boats sailing around the course. I returned to the car to assemble the camera and lens, and found that I had missed that my Benbo tripod was not in the boot, so I had to use a far less steady one, and also missing was my tripod head, so, Note to Self: check all the gear I needed before leaving in the car!

         I set up the less than ideal tripod and took a few shots of the activity, and it was just a shame that the sunshine which on arrival had been fading rapidly was now completely clouded over. This was a shame, but with the EOS R and the Sigma 60-600mm Sports lens with the 2x Converter, the distance I was from the boats was still within an acceptable range. The only available tripod however was very limited in its panning, making it necessary to re-site the tripod, shortly after I had initially positioned it. What I learned was that despite the minimal lighting available it was still possible to obtain adequate quality from where I had set up the tripod, and with the converter attached to the lens.

         After the weekend I will be taking delivery of another camera — the mirrorless Panasonic bridge camera which may well be able to allow me to travel with a long reach camera whenever I am unable to lug my dSLR with my weighty zoom, and heavy tripod. I hope to put it (and myself) through our respective paces as I am assured the quality is there, but really what I am interested in, is its burst rate and the serious possibility of being able to hand hold it, or at worst use it with my monopod.

Sunny Afternoon — a Very Brief Quest Lake Visit

Every so often a brief moment is needed for me to relax by capturing scenes in sunlight, and one such occurred back on Wednesday last, but only now have I had the time to even look at the shots I took.

Quest Lake is another old worked out clay pit that has become a series of lakes, but access is somewhat limited, but near enough for me to reach at a moment’s notice, and after some dismal grey days, sunshine had arrived at a time when I needed a break, so I did not hesitate.  Unlike a previous visit there was far less activity, and most of that at some distance, but it gave me the chance to try panning passing trains along the raised track at the edge of the site, in between clumps of trees. I also took a shot of the distant ‘Caddington Sheds’ as the vast hangars were known, that housed the two Airships, the R100 and R101, and in more recent days, the Airlander.

At a far more personal level, as the eldest son of a past Deputy Officer Commanding, RAF Cardington it held memories for me, as my father retired from there to take up life in ‘Civvy Street’. So hence my taking a shot of the distant hangars beyond the trees. I would like to think that these lakes develop into a Nature Reserve for the countless soulless housing developments, rather than add to their number, since from the few shots in this gallery, it should be apparent that there is both beauty and tranquility here. Carefully selected plant and flower species introduced here would really help to make Bedfordshire a County that was not merely a transit corridor between London and the North, viewed from closed car and train windows, but a location of interest to visit and enjoy, not simply to pass through.

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!

Aylesbury Concert Band Plays at Fairford Leys

A seriously warm day as Fairford Leys celebrates its Summer Fair with the Band to play from the Bandstand in the Centre of the complex. This was an occasion where I was able to use the EOS R with just the one lens, in this case the 24-70mm Canon lens. A mark of just how good the EOS R is can be seen by the shots towards the end where my son-in-law and young grandchildren were tiny fractions of the full frame on the Ferris Wheel whilst using this same lens — well-cropped! The other point worth a mention was the high ISO speed used, yet displaying little evidence due to that tight crop.

One of the beauties of this venue is that since there is always an abundance of activities for the visitors and a central location, not only can I listen to and enjoy the music, I can move all around the Bandstand to capture the musicians and Conductor performing, without disturbing the experience for the audience.

The Concert is in two parts, so I also get to spend some time with my young grandchildren. There is also no need for long lenses as is often the case with all the normal venues that I cover with my daughter who plays Saxophone in the Band.

I still consider myself a complete novice in the handling of this mirrorless body, there are several occasions when I simply do not perform as smoothly and instinctively as I do with my dSLRs; the 5D MkIII and 7D MkII, but with each time out, many of the techniques I use with this camera become smoother and with increasing confidence, but whereas with the dSLRs failed shots are infrequent, the Success Numbers with the Mirrorless are interspersed with either failure due to the focus point  moving to the edge of screen, or my failure when panning to be able to follow due to delays in the screen image displayed related to actuality.

Having completed the preparation of the gallery, I can say that the quality of the Concert images is good technically, only you, the viewer can decide whether emotionally the images carry the same message as the music the Band were playing, which I was enjoying. I certainly was as always, I hope that I convey the spirit of what is being played, and provide the Band with images that promote the concerts into the future. After I had made a concerted (pardon the pun!) effort to include the banners strategically, I learned that the Band is changing its Identity, so that was bad timing on my part.

I am now having problems reaching my blog to get these images online, so hopefully, this will be resolved shortly.

Another Visit to Weston Turville Lake

  

I took a swift look at the nearest lake just down the road, but without a camera, and I walked all the way to the water’s edge; there was not a single bird on the lake and only two anglers on the far side, and sadly no sign of the water bailiff whom I had hoped to contact.

I returned to the car, after I had spoken to the Water Bailliff for Tringford Reservoir who told me that it was already packed out down there, so I decided to drive down again to the lake at Weston Turville. I had no idea whether it would be equally packed at this lake, but felt it was worth a try, and if it was then I could take a look at how easy it would be to park close to the nearby canal, as I had learned that there were kingfishers along that stretch.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that the long lay-by was far from crowded, yet once I had got through the entrance and climbed the Bank steps to the top, I found numerous groups either walking or gathered at some of the jetties. Out on the lake the main species of bird were Mallard and Coots, and in the distance Swans; at first I saw nothing of the Grebes, but then I spotted a flash of white in the distance, and took a look through the camera, and it was one, but way too distant. I spotted its mate after a bit, and they spent a lot of time diving, and then I had to scan far and wide whilst counting to 35 to 45 seconds — I have never been able to predict where they would reappear! Occasionally they would come closer, sometimes    further out.

On this lake visit there were also a couple of dinghies out on the water, only one glider was soaring above in the warm sunshine. Occasionally I would get into conversation with some of the other visitors, with my enquiring into where I might catch sight of kingfishers either here or on the nearby canal. Today’s different subject was a brief encounter with a radio controlled speedboat. And later I even met up with the parents of the boy whose speedboat it was!

I had earlier thought that the far shore was only accessible to anglers, but. Learned there was a higher level path that led behind the reed beds, and the last images were taken from a hide. I cannot claim this gallery of shots were exciting, but I was using the 1.4x Converter and some of the Grebe shots would haven impossible without it.

Tring Spring — Reservoir’s Birds

Armed with the EOS R and Sigma Sports 60-600mm lens I head for Tring Reservoirs in anticipation of reasonable light and a plethora of aquatic birds. One thing I have learned is that I can never guarantee what I might find, and this is no exception. I could never have predicted what turned out to be the classic images of one rare bird I only caught sight of due to another visitor to the lake who mentioned it was out on the lake. I turned around, and there it was; he also mentioned that the day before its partner had been alongside, but he reckoned it was probably back at the nest.

I had chosen the lightest tripod, a carbon fibre one on this occasion so, but with the wrong head, thus on many times during the day, I took to using it as a monopod to give me the freedom of movement. This day was also one of those in which I had turned off the preview of the mirrorless body, to give me an uninterrupted view whilst shooting, as mentioned by Canon's Frankie Jim, and slowly I am gaining in confidence with this body, but there are some aspects I still have to master as I still do not have the fluidity I had with DSLRs. However, I cannot complain about the image quality, it is truly excellent; really helped by many more pixels.

My time spent at the reservoirs on this day just missed some rain at the end, but the angry Coot and the beautiful colours of the Mandarin Duck were the highlights of this trip to the lakes, making it all worthwhile.

The most telling time with this camera body will be when shooting sports such as windsurfers, powerboats and cars at Goodwood, if I am lucky enough to get there this year, and in terms of local opportunities, I need some wind and sun for me to capture those. I am still trying to learn how to get the best out of shooting confidently with the mirrorless body, so the best for that will be some decent winds.

Newton Blossomville – Becomes My Destination

 

The original plan was to continue my search for nearby lakes or stretches of river that are easily accessible from Marston Moretaine and give me a chance to be close enough once parked to be able to carry my heavy tripod to a suitable spot to observe and capture wildlife activity. To that end, I first looked at both Google Earth and recent OS Maps of the area. I thought I had located the nearest likely spot, but the traffic was moderately heavy and in my haste took the wrong turning, which resulted in a long detour before I was back on track. To compound the wasted time, I realised there was no access to the area I had contemplated!

However, I did have another option, and found myself in a familiar location, and the sun was finally breaking cover though half-heartedly, I briefly called in on a newly updated barn, housing a Car Repair and Paint Spray booth to chat briefly with the owner. After a brief chat, I continued on my way heading towards the charmingly Olde Worldly-named village of Newton Blossomville. Before arriving I spotted inviting landscape of undulating fields with young, and just opening fields of Oilseed Rape, and there was a parking spot ideally located at the best viewpoint!

There was enough light that I had no need even for a tripod, and this was too good to miss. There was another opening immediately opposite the car, so no climbing involved either. I  had the EOS R with its flip out screen so both high-level and low level shots were possible and I needed the light to give me as small an Aperture to have good Depth of Field, and since there was a gusty breeze, a reasonably high shutter speed, I varied my Shutter Speed as well as my Aperture to get the best chance of both a lack of movement, and a reasonable depth of field, relative to my choice of viewpoint. So the aperture varied from f/7.1 to f/9, the Shutter Speed from 1/250th to1/800th and the ISO I kept at 200˚, to keep the Noise level down. All shots were using the 24-70mm lens.

In addition to the undulating fields at various stages of growth, I found the nearby pylon was beautifully aligned to give the next pylons in a symmetrical positioning with an early shot in the bag, but with poor lighting and a chance later with the sun co-operating! And of course the golden colour of the rape at its base to add colour and season to the shot.

Having got a few shots, I put the camera back in my bag in the boot, when I heard the gentle clip-clop of horses’ hoofs in the distance, I took a quick check then took a few shots as they approached me, and they stopped for a brief chat. Since they seemed interested, I handed the lead rider one of my cards, in the hope of a possible additional viewer of my work on the blog.

Before returning home, I took a quick look on the far side of the village where I had taken shots of harvesting last year, and noted that they had Oilseed Rape there in place of Wheat. I also enquired about the nearby lakes opposite where I had parked as to possible avian wildlife.

Forest Centre EOS R Testing

Monday afternoon was surprisingly bright and fairly cloudless, so in the middle of the afternoon I made yet another trip out to try to more fully understand how to get the best out of the EOS R Canon’s full frame mirrorless body; I have sat down reading the online manual, on the iPad, as well as tried watching various videos from those who have been able to spend time with Canon and get to grips with the different way of working with this camera. The most notable outcome so far with the hours I have spent experimenting happened this evening when I went back to my ‘conventional’ DSLR,  the EOS 7D MkII, and to my surprise I was actually befuddled by it! This was because of the time spent with the new beast – I actually started laughing at myself!

I decided to cycle round to the Forest Centre with the camera and a couple of lenses and the latest Sigma 1.4x Converter, and see what I could find to test my increasing understanding of how to get the best from it in relation to how I wanted to work. The biggest issue I have found thus far is how to be able to see all the necessary settings simply and speedily. Each time I set myself a task, I find at least one setting that eludes me.

I need to quickly set a specific aperture, preferably with variable auto ISO within a certain range. I also need to know  how many frames I have left, and how much battery charge is available, and when actually shooting I need to be able to make exposure compensation due to either lighting conditions or subject brightness. I do not want to have to delve into several different menus to achieve all this, and so far such speedy alterations have eluded me. I do know that the one component that I have on order will make this far simpler as it is a ring that can be preset to allow me to make some of these adjustments with a simple turn of the ring, but there is no stock of the ring in the country presently!

In order to fund the purchase of this body I have parted with my favourite long lens the 150-600mm Sigma Sports lens, in order to buy the longer-ranged 60-600mm, but that is also not in the country, hence why I am ‘out in the country’ with my 100-400mm Canon lens with the Sigma 1.4x Converter in its place, so the single-paged gallery that accompanies this narrative shows what I did manage with a bit of difficulty – to capture gulls flying at some distance with this combo handheld – to this end you will see some examples where I show the generally full image, and then a crop that shows what detail is present. By way of example frame 10 shows the full image and frame 11 shows a tight crop of the gull; same goes for 13 & 14. (Same also applies for 8 & 9, 16 & 17 and 20 & 21). Using my 5D MkIII and the same lens and Converter renders a far smaller image, so this increase in megabyte size, coupled with no vibration due to the mirror operating, means a far crisper end result. However, actually panning a moving subject is not as easy, hence why in frame 13, the gull is way off centre, yet sharp.

I feel a complete novice, and do not yet have the same level of confidence in my ability to deliver the results I would be happy presenting, and by the time this piece is available on the blog, I have an evening where I am hoping I can shoot a gathering at a networking event to the level I have in the past. It will definitely not be as smooth as I would like, but I am hoping that if all goes well, there should be a measurable jump in the quality I can achieve, as the level of shutter speed should be of a higher order. Normally I might find myself shooting at as low as 1/13th of a second, and this time I am hoping to never go lower than 1/60th. Time will tell.

EOS R – Doing my best to Get to Grips…

Testing Continues Using the EOS R…

The purpose of the testing is more to do with familiarising myself with the very different way of working with this camera, and two things cropped up today which, for the present I am putting down to my ignorance. Certainly, I am not confident enough to use it for a live job, for I do not have the confidence I can deliver, to the same degree of certainty with which I know I can, when using either of my other two Canon bodies; the full-frame EOS 5D MkIII, or the smaller framed EOS 7D MkII.

I have found that despite being set to AF, two of the Canon lenses need sometimes to have their focus changed before they snap into locking on correctly. Also, I need to work out how to stop the delay when shooting, caused by the processing of the frames, which seems odd when I have little interruption when using a mechanical shutter on my DSLRs. So, as I say, this is a criticism of ME – obviously too old in the tooth! I am determined I will get there though, as the results I am seeing suggest the quality of the images is there.

After a morning spent doing some delayed housework, and definitely missing the best of the sunshine, I set off towards the lake at Brogborough for hopefully some windsurfing action, but seeing a lone pheasant as I turned into the road leading to the lake, I pulled into a layby and took the camera with the EOS R body and 100-400mm MkI lens locked it onto the monopod, and headed towards where I spotted him, but he was wily enough to have spotted a photographer, and despite looking around and taking the likely direction he may have taken, I entered the field beyond the hedge where I had lost sight of him through the marked Public Footpath. It was nowhere to be seen, but now I was here and there was a pathway through the high weeds, I decided I would venture further. I did take a few shots, but my heart was not in it, so I headed back to the car and the windsurfing lake, meeting one of them who was leaving!

Before any more left, I took the camera on the monopod out and took a few shots of the remaining three sailors out on the water, before they came in and headed off too. Using the monopod in an occasionally gusty wind and grey overcast meant that I was using 2000˚ ISO, but, a test was what I sought, so I grabbed a small number of shots, and again was pleasantly surprised. The extra megabytes over say the 7D MkII with its small frame size, despite the high ISO does give a cleaner result. Had I the luxury of more sailors on the lake, I could have considered shooting at a wider aperture and lower ISO, but I started at f/5 which also gave me 1/2000 to at least compensate from my waving monopod!

I have made duplicates of the few shots I took with some fairly tight crops to illustrate the inherent quality relative to the full size, so the first of a pair of images is full-frame or close to that after straightening the horizon! You can tell when they are from the same frame by the filename. And the very last image I have done an extra and tighter crop, to show that even at this high ISO, the image holds up.

I am waiting on the delivery of the adapter ring that can provide presets and will likely use this for either an ISO change or Exposure compensation when shooting Sports activities as in Britain non-stop bright sun is rare! If snow is on its way, then I can see just what this body can do.

Canon EOS R Further Testing

          This was a trip where I travelled light; no tripod, just the monopod, the new EOS R body and the 100-400mm, and 35mm lenses, and the 1.4x Converter.

          I needed to try to find a setup for the new Canon mirrorless body where I felt confident that I could achieve the best settings in changing circumstances, so I went out yet again with just that mindset. Every so often the light was moderately bright, but overall the mistiness gave the scenes I captured a somewhat dull feel, even though the noticeable result showed that the detail was crisper than I could have achieved on my EOS 5D MkIII, or 7DMkII under similar circumstances. To this end I have taken an enlarged section from two images that show this noticeable amount of extra detail that would appear in a print, than can be shown on the screen in the galleries.

          I have yet to quickly alter settings which I knew I wanted with this body, because those changes required too many steps; I am hoping that this is purely down to my unfamiliarity. I found that if I wanted to make a change, I had first to go elsewhere to reach the starting point to make that change; it always seemed to take several clicks rather than one.

          The extra five to ten gigabytes in image size means that from the same lens, I was always getting a smoother result than on my other bodies, I could crop more tightly with less fear of intrusive grain, and many of the shots taken on this outing were taken with the 1.4x Converter on the MkI 100-400mm Canon zoom, and the distant water tank illustrates just how much extra detail I was able to achieve from the inherently larger file this body gives.

          I found this location, the Sandy Smith Nature Reserve, close by the old wartime airbase of Chicksands by pure happenstance, and it is an area close to minor tributaries of the river Great Ouse. I only met two other people, but from the second person, a man walking two of his dogs, I gleaned some hopefully, very useful knowledge of how to get to some more wooded areas by the river, possibly giving me a chance of finding some aquatic birds, so this is a location I will be visiting again, but choosing a different direction when heading from my car.

          When I first contemplated a mirrorless body, I was always concerned about the view through the eyepiece, but on this occasion, I was highly impressed, I have no qualms in stating that the quality was excellent. To help in making this purchase, I have sold two lenses and an earlier body, and I feel that this will prove to be a good move, I just hope I can master the controls, because presently I am a learner driver!