A Broglake Break with Foilers

There seemed enough wind to consider that there would be those who would take the opportunity to do some windsurfing, so I got together the camera, long lens and tripod and headed for the Lake at Brogborough — on arrival I was not sure my surmise was correct as the number of cars here were fewer than I had hoped.

I parked up and walked towards the shoreline, and I spotted a single sailor out on the water, but as I reached the trees, I realised there were a few more, and Sam was among the number, so I headed back to the car and opened the boot to get the camera onto the tripod. I had also noted that one of the sailors on the front was sporting an upturned board with a hydrofoil, and I recognised him as an experienced windsurfer that I had not seen before with one. After chatting with him as he began preparing his sail on the mast, I set the tripod up on the jetty ready for when  anyone took to the water.

Here was a chance to see more people taking to foiling on the lake and, with different types of hydrofoil; even Sam was on a different design from what I had seen before. It was not long before I was shooting, and watching Sam do his best to keep airborne whilst gybing despite a fickle wind. Since much of the activity took place a good distance out, it was fortunate that I had opted for using the additional 1.4x Converter on the Sigma 60-600mm Sports lens, and increasingly I was using the Acrotech Long Lens head in preference to a gimbal, which was smoother, but did require me to lock it firmly when not shooting.

Although I was not there for long, I was tending to attempt to get sequences, so the amount of shots taken soon mounted, and this coupled with the heat adversely affecting my computer has meant it has taken way longer to get these images up, which is a shame.

Harrold-Odell Country Park Birds

 

I now had the EOS R mirrorless camera and Sigma Sports 60-600mm lens back, and was keen to set everything up again, and also having learned from Canon how to shoot sequences with breaks in shooting, without the interruption of the saved files in the viewfinder until I needed to review the captured images. I did not find it as fluid as when using a conventional DSLR, but with practice I believe I will manage to master it. When you learn how to set this up, it is straightforward, but I had to find the setting by asking my Canon Guru!

Now if I need to review the image I click Preview rather than have to wait as the sequence is displayed in the viewfinder, when what I was trying to do was continue shooting once an action continued. Thus far it is not as fluid as my earlier experience with a mirror flipping, but I am hoping I will master it with more practice. One piece of advice offered was to slow the frame rate, but that would seem counter-intuitive, but I will explore all this as every opportunity arrives. What I have already found is that the quality of the captured images exceeds that of the earlier lenses due to the reduced camera shutter vibration and the larger inherent file size; in other words the image quality exceeds what I previously achieved. Another factor also comes into play in low light levels; the image brightness improves both the cameras ability and mine to focus accurately.

The adapter to use my existing investment in lenses is yet another benefit of the move to a mirrorless body, but it has been a steep learning curve, and as yet I do not have the fluidity I experienced with my earlier bodies (and my brain is older, and less tractable!) My own body has a similar issue with my wonderfully stable Benbo tripod, whose weight is a severe issue when travelling on foot for any distance!

On this trip the only bird that was in any way special was a lone Grebe, but the trip was mainly an exercise to gain confidence in the mirrorless body and the Sigma 60-600mm lens, which I fulfilled albeit not spotting the incorrect setting of colour temperature, which fortunately I was able to sort in ‘post’! I still have further settings to reinstate, but for anyone considering the change to the EOS R, fear not.

Marsworth Reservoir with Sigma 60-600 Sports on EOS R Body

The title should really include another important piece of information — I also added the Sigma 1.4 Converter, and was amazed by how well this combination worked. So that readers of this piece can fully understand just how well this combo performed I have taken a shot from the same standpoint at the wide angle end of the lens’ range to give an indication of where I was when taking the subsequent pictures. Frame 3 shows the exact view from my position when the lens was at its shortest focal length, albeit still with the 1.4 Converter still attached! So you can see how impressive the images are; immediately below the distant view at frame 9, is an enlargement from the previous picture, showing just how much detail there is, and I was amazed! So, all praise to Canon and Sigma, for the sensor in the EOS R, and Sigma for both this excellent range telephoto and their 1.4 Extender — it makes me wonder how the 2x Converter would fare on this body? Perhaps Sigma might loan me a 2x to check it out.

At this point I shall digress; I drove down to Sigma to borrow this lens due to a really frustrating situation that was brought about by the carriers, UPS who managed for no less than the second occasion to fail to read the postcode on my package beyond the first three characters, and dropped my package into the Amazon Depot which due to Amazon’s high-handed arrogance, only acknowledges the Entire Delivery, and any package not due to Amazon, simply place it in a cage for when the carrier next collects, and does not reflect this in the tracking, so the tracking at this point reads ‘Delivered’. It is only subsequently revived once the original Courier has returned it to their Depot. This is a gross failure on Amazon and UPS’ Duty of Care, and should be utterly condemned. It completely undermines the Tracking System and since the fact that this has occurred twice to me personally, it must be only the tip of an Iceberg, and has but one result that packages lost completely are untraceable, and claims on Insurance simply compounds the losses, and increases everyone’s prices for Deliveries. This must be tackled at Government level. If anyone reading this piece has had similar issues of packages being delivered to Amazon and suffered delivery delays please tackle your MP, so we can prevent this from escalating.

Back to the narrative; I had been concerned that perhaps the Sigma Sports 60-600mm  lens might fail to focus when on this mirrorless body, but though on occasion I did have to  occasionally twist the focus ring to initiate autofocus,  I believe I may be able to use the Custom Presets on the lens to obviate that. I shall be enquiring of Sigma on that after the weekend. 

One observation I have made in relation to the EOS R is that it is rather easy to have wide range subject exposures suffer from irretrievable highlights, but whether this is due to Adobe not yet having an EOS R-specific profile. I am relying currently on a previous, but seemingly otherwise workable profile. If I have subjects with bright whites, I am taking a similar approach to how I handled transparencies in the days of film, and choosing to under-expose in such circumstances. The dynamic range of sunlit swans is such an example, it is definitely better to under-expose and then lift the shadows ‘in Post’.

I wonder how long before My lens arrives having gone ‘Up the Suwannee’ — the shoe on the lens though a little longer than some is not as long as the separate full length one which I had for the earlier 150-600mm lens, as I was loathe to put mine on this loan lens, so I await the return of the one due to arrive when UPS get it back onto its route to me.

The 60-600mm lens may be heavy, but using one lens and one body for sports and wildlife is a boon, and with the marginally lighter mirrorless full-frame body giving such image quality has certainly been worthwhile, but there is a learning curve, and  I still have a way to go to reach the ease of use to which I had become accustomed with the 5D MkIII and 7D MkII…