Back to Broadpool this evening to have another go at snapping the heron. It was a lovely evening and there was the promise of another nice sunset to tempt me, too.
I also wanted to try a couple of lenses on the infra red camera to check for hotspots. Boring bit alert. Some lenses suffer from internal reflections, particularly in the infra red spectrum. These manifest themselves as bright areas in the centre of the frame, but only on the image, not in the viewfinder. It’s nothing to do with the quality of the lens, rather the materials used to construct it. It’s almost impossible to get rid of the hotspot effectively post camera. Tonight I was trying a 24mm prime lens and the 18-270 zoom. Both passed with flying colours (well, flying shades of near infra red actually).
At the pond, a young couple were fishing. That’s not a euphemism. They were actually fishing. So I didn’t hold out much hope for spotting the heron, which is very shy. So I walked around the pond and concentrated on the tiny world of macro. You can see from some of the photos, there were a few tiny things around.
Making my way back towards the car, I suddenly heard a commotion ahead and at the same time, the heron leapt up into the air from about 5 yards away and flew off into the reeds. I hadn’t seen it and I was almost close enough to touch it. I have to learnt to walk more slowly to give me time to look more closely.
I was quite pleased with the infra red photos, though.
franticsmurf 