Here is another Egret shot in flight. And also a Cormorant drying its wings. The third picture goes with my previous series and show an Egret approaching another one just before the altercation.

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Saw an altercation yesterday between two Great Egrets which I captured is a series of pictures. This is a bird that seems to always enjoy working alone, and this picture shows its behavior with its own kind.

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Here is a shot of the moon using the Tamron 150-600mm. Was taken in RAW and then post-processed giving it an HDR look.

I have a camera that has been converted for IR photography. It is a full spectrum conversion which means that I have to supply a filter in front of the lens. This gives the ability to use 590 nm or 720 nm or even 850 nm for different effects. Photoshop can simulate a bit, but it is not the real thing and this is so much better.

What to watch out for are hot spots near the center of the picture. I have a lens that does this (the original kit lens). And the other lenses I have do not have this problem.

Also, I find that my auto focus is fooled and it shoots slightly out of focus. if I manually focus, the problem is solved.

The camera is a Sony A55. I find that all my older Minolta Maxxum lenses work just fine. And my newer lenses work fine too. Just not the original kit lens. But I also don't have filters to fit all of my lenses.

I too have a number of these older lenses. What I like most is the smooth manual focus. The newer lenses aren't really intended to be manually focused and the manual focus is much more challenging. But these older lenses are geared down and you have a lot of rotation. Much nicer to manually focus.

But they can all suffer more from CA than the newer lenses.

I find that I have the most success if I park myself somewhere they like to visit and just wait for them to come to me. I can never get a good shot where I just walk up on a bird. They always fly away. But if I am real still, they forget that I am even there and will sometimes land in a good place. And be prepared to focus manually if necessary. The camera AF can really be fooled by other distractions in the picture.

I am using a Vangard Alta Pro 263AT with a Gimbal mount and it is very sturdy. I also use a remote shutter release cable.

I found this lens was too much for the Ball Head Mount. Too much chance that it would tip over. But the Gimbal mount is a dream to use. After balancing, I can give it just the amount of drag I want and can easily pan anywhere I want to point.

And many shots, where there is chance the auto focus will pick the wrong thing to focus on, I have switched to manual focus. On the Sony, I enable the live view magnifier and carefully focus.

I have included some animal swimming across a lake in Morgan Hill CA. I haven't identified what this animal is. But I used manual focus and focused on the spot this animal would swim into and when he got there, snapped his picture.

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Yes, it is something to see. Here it is a little closer.

I recently purchased the Tamron 150-600mm lens for a Sony. I have found that the focus is almost always right on the mark. I went out yesterday and did a combination of manual focus and auto focus with excellent results. Was using a Gimbal mount and had stabilization turned off. It was late in the afternoon, so the sun was low.

Was using a Kenko 1.4x TC with the Sony A57, and crop sensor. The Great Egret was perhaps 200 feet away.

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