. . . and probably a long one at that. Short attention span, feel free to scroll down to the images.
Scouring the internet last night to see if I could find any images taken with the R7/100-400/1.4X setup, it eventually dawned on me that was exactly what I shot in QLD last year. All I had to do was look through my archives. And images that weren’t shot run-and-gun seemed acceptable.
A quick morning stop-off and out into the field with the setup in varying light from good to poor with some rain, the current copies shot noticeably better than the previous ones. The camera manages consistently decent raw files up to ISO 6400 and some usable ones even beyond, so f/11 in mediocre light was at least doable. See the cropped image below followed by a larger than 100% crop of a portion of the shot
I can’t seem to control how this stuff displays on the web page. Just bear in mind the entire actual bird, a dainty little lady, is barely two inches long, if that.
With no round #4 with the RF 100-500mm in the cards, the remaining question for shooting RF long in foul weather is…what lens? The 280 Telyt does just fine on the R7, but it seems odd that Canon hasn’t yet come up with an affordable L lens of length other than the zoom, which certainly has its limitations. And (all together now) isn’t really much better than the RF 100-400mm.
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On a totally unrelated (for the moment) issue, something a shopowner friend said a few days ago really stuck in my head. We were discussing our views about after-sale service by the local Leica “partner,” as well as by their previous distributor. He made the point that both entities view(ed) Leica’s offerings as lifestyle products rather than as serious photography gear.
From that perspective, everything fits: the luxury brand tie-ins, the celebrity special editions, the keyrings, water bottles, watches, etc. Even the “socially-conscious” awards and exhibits, right down to the locations of their stores; it all fits. And it explains why I’ve never felt at all like a “Leica customer,” in spite of having owned and used a load of their products.
Maybe it also helps to explain that, while the R glass and the TL2 with its glass aren’t going anywhere, the R6 Mark II is starting to look rather interesting . . .
