The other day I picked up a cheap old tele-converter for Pentax, for five dollars. I thought I’d test it out with my 500mm Tamron mirror lens, just for fun, expecting nothing. This is close to a 28x power telescope on the APS-C size sensor of my K100 DSLR. There are two problems with doing this; first thing is it reduces the aperture another f stop from f8 to f11, thereby slowing down the shutter and forcing the ISO higher. Both those factors effect image quality negatively. But second; the thing is really hard to hold steady! However, in the sunshine today I was able to get a few shots, which proved not bad. Remarkable in a way, when you consider these were hand held. The hawk probably would have been acceptable if I’d used a tripod, as the shutter speed was 1/45th of a second. That’s absurdly slow for a 1000mm lens. I applied some post processing to that image to try to make it look more artsy, since it was rather fuzzy to begin with. The heron was about 200 feet away however, and it turned out not too badly. If I wanted to get better results than this I’d have to buy a lens that costs over a thousand bucks, which isn’t going to happen soon.
Tag Archives: hawk
The Lake in Winter
The Lake in Winter
winter weather is here
the lake has a frozen crust
ducks stand around perplexed by solid water
they peck at the ice as if expecting food
they shuffle about like old people
wearing slipper socks on a slippery floor
but they don’t fall, and if they do
they have not far to go
we stood and watched them,
glowing in the brilliant sunlight
then started to walk away and they scattered suddenly
for no apparent reason but then two eagles cruised by
looking for ducks perhaps, or maybe not
surely it would have been so easy to swoop down and grab one
next a river otter hiding beneath the dock
where there was no ice
came out briefly chewing on something we couldn’t see
before it went back into hiding
now a hawk, a large red tail
harassed by crows it leaves its high perch
leisurely sails away, regal, nonplussed by its pursuers
it soon disappears like the otter, but into the sky
quite frozen we turn towards home now
when we find a skull hung from a branch by the path
a cow we assume, whence it came a mystery
no cows here for decades yet there it hangs
like a relic from the desert
we examine and leave it there
looking up we see the eagle swirling about
riding the updraft or merely the wind
it circles several times then heads away
towards a perch atop a tall tree,
coming to rest seemingly implacable
the master of all beneath its imperious gaze
it hardly bothers to see us as we walk by
no doubt it paid us no heed
though we looked up and admired it with looks that said
we hold you in awe and though we do not scatter when you come
we are grateful you deign not attack us
a natural fact of which we are secretly worried
lest it not be an infallible truth
Filed under Photography, Poetry, Uncategorized