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.
How exciting and are you thinking of going telephoto? 300-400 is about the length you can go before always needing a tripod (but sometimes I wish I had one on me)! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!