Back Garden super-tele shots

[LennyBloke]

Been playing with the "White Beast" (A*300/2.8) over the last week and had a thought that the Pentax HD WR 1.4x might be a good match, so tried a few back garden shots on the K5iis (so a 420mm combo then increased to 630mm with the APS-C factor).





Pretty pleased with the lack of IQ degradation, keeping the shutter speed at 1/640 or above seems to be the key to avoiding camera shake!

[ronniemac]

As always, John, your photos are both beautiful and impeccable!
I do believe you have focused on the eye of the Robin

[Derek897]

Excellent combo and excellent skills. Cracking shots

[starless]

Yes, I'd say that worked!

[Arbalist]

Very good, I like the Robin.

[Burnhole]

The flowers look pristine. The feathers on the robin are very detailed. The branch to the right of the robin looks a little odd though

[LennyBloke]

.... The branch to the right of the robin looks a little odd though

It's a massive, overgrown Clematis - so the branches are more like a sinewy string or rope than typical twigs.

[Derek897]

The branch to the right of the robin looks a little odd though

It does, but if you look at the branches to the rear, they are very similar, its mostly the oofa with the difference being the branch on the right is to the fore and more pronounced,
Thats what it looks like to me anyway.

[Mannesty]

keeping the shutter speed at 1/640 or above seems to be the key to avoiding camera shake!

Fits the rule of thumb of 1/Focal Length to avoid camera shake. With your effective Focal length of 630mm, 1/640 would be the minimum.

Excellent images.

[LennyBloke]

keeping the shutter speed at 1/640 or above seems to be the key to avoiding camera shake!

Fits the rule of thumb of 1/Focal Length to avoid camera shake. With your effective Focal length of 630mm, 1/640 would be the minimum.

Excellent images.

It really is one of those rules that's worth abiding by (for telephoto shots at least) - I used to use the rule incorrectly, and would have chosen the closest speed to 1/420 (300 x 1.4) forgetting that on an APS-C camera the effective focal length is 630mm - and my "keeper" rate was patchy, often with a slight amount of shake - since the penny dropped I've been getting far sharper shots

Thanks for the comments everyone

[Burnhole]

I see now - not very green fingered - sorry!
I see that you embed/link to your flickr images - what's the best/recommended way to do that - I always add to gallery here and add to flickr separately

[LennyBloke]

...I see that you embed/link to your flickr images - what's the best/recommended way to do that - I always add to gallery here and add to flickr separately

Not sure what the recommended way is for this Forum but I always embed by adding the url of the image I want (at the size I want) into the IMG tags - that way it will display either scaled down to fit the post or full size depending on the size of the image on Flickr. Doing it this way allows people to click on the image itself which will then open it on Flickr at the size I intended it to be seen - this can be very useful if you are trying to illustrate IQ, resolution, etc.

One of my biggest annoyances is not being able to see a quality image at a decent size.