The previous post is directly responsible for this one. Getting back out with the camera and refreshing my memory on why I was looking at buying the Fuji 150-600mm led to an impulse buy one Tuesday afternoon when I saw MPB had a particularly decent looking sample of the lens in stock. So now the far away birds and other far away things are slightly less far away. I think that’s a suitable summary of the situation. The light around here (by which I mean pretty much all of Ireland) has been bloody awful for quite a while now, so the first outing with the monster was under less than ideal conditions. Instead, you get to see what went right when the sun did finally decide to come out last Saturday morning.

I posted the same photos to Instagram (yes, I’m kind of back on it), and after being utterly disgusted at the mashed photo-ish looking sauce it returned once the upload was complete, I thought it only right to upload a copy here too so anyone interested can see that I did in fact manage to take a series of in focus, mostly sharp photos. My complaint(s) with Instagram remain as ever, shitty compression ruins photos.

This journey was to East Cork, Ballynamona strand between Garryvoe and Ballycotton. It was a recommendation from a fellow bird pervert I met while testing out the lens for the first time at Harper’s Island Wetlands. I had until this point been in the presence of maybe 2 or 3 Stonechats at any one time. I counted myself quite lucky if I spotted one on my semi-regular sweary mental health stomps around Tramore valley park. Except now I know where they’re all hanging out, at the beach.

I’m going to have to gift a beer to the guy that recommended this spot to me, it was a fantastic couple of hours out of the house on Saturday morning. Sunshine, perfect temperature and the birds easily outnumbered the people by 100 to 1.

Then I got home, made a coffee and sat in a comfortable chair to browse through the spoils of the outing on the back of the camera. Not wanting to be left out of the proceedings, Archie (one of the the resident Chaffinches) made a lightning quick appearance. With camera in hand it seemed like a waste not to grab a couple of frames of the noisy little bugger.

Initially I wasn’t too impressed with the lens. It seemed soft and focus wasn’t wonderful. Turns out it really helps with a 600mm lens if you’re 1 – not shooting through a dirty window, 2 – using the correct focus mode and setting and 3 – giving it all the shutter speed it needs to properly freeze the little birdies. Yes with an ƒ8 lens you do pay for that with ISO, but thankfully the noise/grain on the Fuji system is more pleasant and reminiscent of film grain than just being awful digital noise as you might get on other systems. Also, Lightroom AI denoise is suspiciously good.

So yeah, I’m keeping the lens. Now I need to go and take photos of more wildlife.