people places n things
Getting the nest ready for next months newest arrivals
Feeling much better today than I did yesterday when I had stomach cramps so bad I thought an alien was trying to burst out of my body. After shoveling my property, I came out here to Clove Lake to take a quick walk around the lakes to see what this latest Nor'easter did to the park artistically.
Along my trek for the first time that I past the nest since last summer I saw one of the adult Great blues perched on their now famous nest. In all the times I've walked past the nest after the last of the chicks flew the coup, the nest had remained empty, as the parents left the nest completely alone, as far as I could tell.
But with spring just around the corner I thought I might see either of the adults checking out the nest for damage from the long winter when I walked by today, and sure enough I did. And on my circular trip back towards Victory blvd. I stopped for a few minutes to grab a few shots.
It was my first time to try out my faithful 25 plus year old 300mm lens with a camera much closer in design to what Nikon engineers 30 years ago designed it to go with it. Both my D300 camera's had an anti-aliasing filter in them that slightly blurred the image to remove possible moire patterns in your shots. Nikon engineers today know the lenses have to deal with that, and are made to compensate for it. There was no such problem with film camera's, so there was no effort to compensate for that, which hurt image quality when I used my beloved telephoto on them.
This D500's sensor is so advanced it doesn't need that aliasing filter. So it allows my 300mm Nikkor to perform like it did in the old days with my all time favorite F3, and FA camera's. Even better for the first time ever I tried handholding this lens, and had no problems keeping it steady. Can't say focusing was as easy, as snow and wind made it almost impossible for me to see clearly into my view finder, so I had to rely on the in focus indicator inside my view finder and hope it was right. In this shot it was.
This manual focus lens may be nearly 30 years old but this silky smooth internal focusing lens still performs as well now as it did when I took it out on nature trips back when I was in my twenty's.
