Bird sniper

Today I was out with a friend I haven't seen in a while. She's on the verge of becoming a professional photographer. She's come a long way in the last three years. Recently she acquired a used Canon 7D and was given... GIVEN... a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens. Retail, the pair would set you back $3600 before taxes, with 2/3 of that being the price of the lens. Today she wanted to wander out to the Scarborough Bluffs to try them out.

She also brought with her her Canon T1i, sort of the great-grandchild of the eight-year-old Canon XT I still have, along with a much less expensive 70-300 lens. She graciously allowed me to borrow and use the T1i which she tried to work out the 7D, and when we returned to her place, she downloaded my shots to one of my thumb drives. I took three hundred-some-odd shots over about 15 minutes, and of the bunch, about two dozen or so struck me as keepers.

It's been a long time since I've really done anything with my own DSLR. It's no hell these days; 8 megapixel, three generations back in sensor processor technology, and I don't think any of my lenses is worth more than about $500 new. Nevertheless I got that old thrill out of piloting the T1i today, and even discovered a new technique: keep your left eye open to follow the birds while you're sighting the lens at 300mm with the right. That's where most of the decent shots came in. I have a 300mm lens of my own. I should really make more use of my Rebel XT this spring and summer.

Here are my shots from today. All but one of them are cropped for better effect, but otherwise, they're pretty much all the way they came out of the camera.