Hair-Raising Winds

Sunday was another sunny day, so we went to Theler again because I wanted to try out my new Canon EOS R5 with a 600mm fixed lens. When we left I thought it would be the perfect day to try out the camera because the lighting seemed perfect, especially for this time of year. I began to have some doubts, though, when crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and had trouble staying in my lane because of the high winds.  Sure enough, the winds were hair-raising as proved by this shot of the only Great Blue Heron we saw.  

Although my new camera doesn’t seem to care about high winds, the birds certainly do, and they were all hunkered down like this heron.  In fact, the only birds that seemed totally indifferent to the wind were the gulls who seemed to enjoy zipping around without having to even flap a wing.

Most of the birds we saw were far, far away, too far away even for mu 600mm lens, though I did like the two shots of the Northern Pintails that took off as soon as we got to the end of the walkway.

I especially liked this shot, even though it is heavily cropped because of how far they were away.

These gulls were on the same peninsula, so the picture is even more heavily cropped.

Despite a few drawbacks, I think the EOS R5 will become my go-to camera because it is so much lighter than my other two cameras or even the Sony camera that I bought just for hiking.  First, I’ll have to learn some new settings.  Somehow these shots were .jpg, not RAW which made it much harder to fix shadows and highlights.

My biggest complaint, though, and definitely the hardest to adapt to, is the viewfinder.  Instead of seeing through the lens you see an electronically generated image — resulting in a darker and  blurrier image.  That, compounded by the fact that my glasses automatically darken in bright sunlight, meant that I was often simply pointing my camera at a subject and hoping that it was focused.  More often than not, the images were remarkably sharp, though.  

The day seems to be fast approaching when all I will need to do to take great photos is to bring the camera with me and turn it on.

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