Noticing – August 31, 2012
One of the reasons I’ve been trying to practice daily is to keep a high level of familiarity with my equipment. Each day when I pick a lens and camera, I often try for a combination that I haven’t used in a while.
Todays image is made with a setup that I haven’t played with in a few months now. This is my D300 (cropped sensor), Nikon’s TC-20E III teleconvertor, and my 70-200 VR II. All totaled that is equivalent to 600mm in a full frame 35mm camera. That’s quite a bit of reach.
It’s not a perfect setup, you’ve got to stop down a bit to get things really sharp, but I’ve been surprised by what I’ve been able to do with it. This image though is not as sharp as I’d like and it’s a bit noisy. To get enough sensitivity for the two-stop loss from the TC-20E III I shot at 1600ISO, which, on the D300, is where the noise really starts to show. There’s also just a bit of camera shake, I think. Handheld at 1/125 of a second at 600mm is really pushing things, even for the excellent image stabilisation of the 70-200. I’m sure there’s a bit of detail lost to the little hummer’s movements as well.
All in all though, a nice image for a daily post, but not something I’d print very large.
