Third Times a Charm

Yesterday morning I tried out a new telephoto lens. A Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di Vc Usd Lens. It's a pretty big deal for me because I don't purchase new camera equipment that often. After my appointment with the tax man I headed out to the ranch in the Little Lake Valley for some bird photography. I had a nice mossy section of a tree trunk set up near my photoblind. I put out some black sunflower seed and after about a twenty minute wait the birds started coming in to feed. The first image was of the moss on the tree trunk as I attempted to get a prefocus of the spot where I wanted to catch a bird coming into feed. I pressed the shutter too hard and click. An image of moss on a tree trunk. Whoops! The second image was of an Acorn Woodpecker with it's head turned way down and its eye was barely visible. Poor timing on my part and another mess up. My third image with the new lens was a keeper. A beautiful close up. After that I just had fun getting used to what the lens could do. The lens performed flawlessly. My biggest problem was operator error. I kept forgetting which way to turn the lens to zoom it in or out. I was using spot focusing and locating the sensor onto the birds eye and it was working really well. Next I tried grid focusing and it worked OK. I really liked the spot focusing better. It was spot on. Forgive the pun! On the trip home I found a Blacktail Deer doe resting in the shade. I used the Vibration Compensator VC for the first time and it was really cool to see the image snap into place. So far I'm really happy with this lens. All images created with a Canon 7D in AV mode, ISO 400 with a Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di Vc Usd Lens on a Manfrotto 055 XPROB tripod with a Bogen 3055 Ballhead.