Happy Monday.  Hope you have the day off today.  Yesterday I decided to take my Sigma 150 – 500 mm telephoto lens out for a test shoot.  My first experience with it was not very good.  I sent it back to the company to have it calibrated.  Additionally my experience with their customer service people really left something to be desired but that is another story for another time.

I took the Sigma and the Tamron out for a side-by-side comparison shoot.  First stop was lock and dam #10.  No eagles or birds of any kind flying there so I shot some signs for a test of sharpness.  I was pleased with the results of that test.  Next I remembered my encounter with the geese on 14^th street and decided to see if they were still there.

They were indeed there along with a pretty good number of ducks.  So I slowly walked up on them and sat on one of the big rocks until they became comfortable with me being there.

I shot about 100 images with the Sigma and the same number with the Tamron.  The good news was I couldn’t tell much difference.  Both lenses rendered reasonably sharp images.

I took the advice of my friend Burt and shot at 1/1250 sec at f8.  ISO was set to automatic and varied between 200 to 600 depending on the angle I shot.  I might even bump that up to f9 just to check it out.

So it was a fun experiment and I enjoyed watching the ducks and geese swimming and grooming themselves on land.  There must have been around a 100 birds there and they were enjoying the open water.

Enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.