Part of my Thanksgiving with the Birds talk included the story of how Jeremy Martin loaned me his 300mm lens and I broke it.  Despite that story, another Audubon friend, Norm Karp, offered to loan me his lens to see how I like it.

It’s a Minitel-M Spiratone 1:8 f=500mm Mirror Lens.  Boy do I have a lot of learning to do!  Two things in particular:  It doesn’t have auto-focus, so I have to really pay attention to that…  Also, I usually work with Aperture priority with my other lens…  but with this one, I will have to set shutter speed instead.  I don’t have a tripod (yet) and can’t hold the camera steady enough when I set the aperature and let the camera pick the shutter speed!  Not with this lens, anyway…

I took it out Tuesday, a gray November day, for a short walk as the sun was going down.  I took 50 or 60 photos.  This American Crow was kind enough to sit quite still while I fussed with camera settings It’s the only photo I felt good enough about to post. (I kept hearing a Pileated, but he wouldn’t sit still.)

I’ll keep practicing, though, and see what I can come up with.