Dan

These look nice. Might be tempted to try the headstock one looking the other way, back towards the nut. Also on that one, how about peeling off the protective film from the trussrod cover?

But I think they all work well together.

Dan

Perhaps I shouldn't have put that on the end of my last post, it appears to have been overlooked.

Dan

I can highly recommend the lens. I've been using it for birds, hedgehogs, flowers, insects...

Another couple of examples:







It would work a treat with your owl shots. I'm not sure it's any sharper than my Tamron 300mm f/2.8, but it's definitely lighter so I'm taking it with me all the time. Many of the shots I've got with it so far would have just passed me by without it.

By the way, the bird is a Yellow Fronted Canary, and he's still loitering today, hopefully he might stick around for a while. Lovely little thing he is.

Dan

How I spent my evening...



K10D, DA*300mm @f/6.7, 1/180s, ISO200, flash.

He wandered around, sniffed my shoe a couple of times, then sat in his food bowl and had a drink.

The DA*300mm has hardly been off my camera since I got it.

Dan

Not native, but very unlikely to have flown here - it's almost certainly an escapee.

Siskin and Yellowhammer are sort of along the right lines, Serin would be nearer (same family), but it's a native of Africa, and if I was being daft, I could call it a type of 'miner' bird.

Dan

For those of you who like your birds, here's one that turned up at work today (Bedfords Park, Romford). I know what it is (now, after a fair amount of searching and ideas from others ), but if you like a challenge have a go.



K10D, DA*300mm, f/5.6, 1/350s, ISO 100. Cropped down to about 1/3 of the frame, but it did let me get to about 5 feet away.

Hang on, here's another, showing it side on.




Answers on a postcard...

Dan

Lovely shots, I'm very jealous. I thought you were going to say you were in north norfolk, as when we were up there in January we saw 8 Barn Owls in 3 days. Lucky if you see one a year down here.

Dan

That's true.

Dan

It would make a difference - depth of field at 1:1 is even less!

It looks to me that you've used the lens wide open, or near enough. Stopping down to f/11 or 16 will give you more depth of field, but at the expense of a slower shutter speed. You may still be able to handhold in bright light, especially if you up the ISO to 200.

Focusing is critical, and when you get that right, you can get away with using a wider aperture (one of my favourite shots was a dragonfly side-on, taken at f/5.6, at 1:1 mag - part of the eye is in focus, and some of the rest of the shot, but it just looks 'right' to me).

You need to carefully choose the angle you're shooting from. The beetle would have been better more from the front, looking at it at an angle still. You would have been able to get its nearest eye, mouth, and front of shell in focus (or near enough). Just try different things, and see how you get on.

Fundamentally though, you're doing nothing wrong!

Dan