Duck!
An 'expedition' to Lake Wilderness in Maple Valley, WA
I love to photograph waterfowl. I used to live very close Lake Wilderness in Maple Valley, WA, but we moved out into the country. Lots of small birds out in the country; the ducks oddly enough prefer still water.
So I drove about an hour north to Lake Wilderness with a rented telephoto lens in tow: a 400mm Canon f/4 DO II (which I’ve raved about here already). It’s a very sharp lens, as you can see above. But it’s not the winner in the sharp-lens competition I’ve been holding. See much more detail about that lens here.
I gained a lot of enthusiasm working that lens; it’s always a pleasure to use really good tools. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Sony has released a 300mm telephoto that is…sharper still. Oh my!
I was able to get one of those, and have been doing shootouts and comparisons between the two lenses. As happy as I was with the Canon 400, I’m even happier with the Sony 300.
(Yes, it’s not as long a lens, so it magnifies the subject less, but there is a workaround for that called an extender. The Sony 1.4x extender turns the 300mm lens into a 420mm lens.)
So what can the Sony 300 do? I’ve mostly been doing technical testing to confirm its sharpness, but I did get some nice photos of backyard birds. Here’s a red-breasted sapsucker who has been visiting us daily.
I’ll have more photos from the Sony 300, but for the next week we’ve got rain, more rain, and lots more rain coming…