I had an interesting weekend. Saturday I was going to work on a home project but Angie and Josh stopped by and we had an absolute ball watching Josh explore his world. He is walking full bore now and is curious about everything. I’ll have a post about their visit tomorrow but it was just a delight to have them.
Jeanne and I decided to finally go to Le Claire and visit Lock and Dam 14. Burt has told me so much about the place and I have seen the amazing eagle shots he had made so even though it was about a 90 mile trek one way Jeanne said she would like to go.
I truly didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. There were about 20 – 30 people with all types of exotic lens sitting on tripods and mono pods. Considering some of those lens cost between $5,000 to $12,000 I was in a state of lens envy almost immediately after arriving. 🙂 It was good that Jeanne saw that others have the same condition I do only in some cases much worse.
We visited with some of the photographers for awhile and quickly learned that most of them are really serious about their photography. One gentleman we spoke with had traveled over 3.5 hours to shoot at the dam. It was about this time that Burt arrived. He came with fish and everyone was glad to see him. Shortly after he threw some fish in the eagles appeared and started flying over. It was incredible how close they would fly to us.
This is the best eagle shot I’ve had this year. Not a very good one compared to the standards of the regulars at LD 14 have but a good for me. Then it happened. My lens started freezing up. At first it was slow to focus on the eagle and I missed a lot of shots because I couldn’t get it to focus and when I did they were so blurry. After a few minutes it wouldn’t focus at all and would lock up. In fact the mirror would lock up on the camera when I would push the shutter.
A similar thing happened on my birthday. I was out in 22 degree weather for about 3 hours and then the lens started getting sluggish. I went to my car and let it warm up and it was fine for the rest of the day.
This is the last shot I got Sunday and it is pretty soft. I tried warming the lens up, changing cameras, different settings but all to no avail. It was like the focusing motor in the lens just failed.
It was about this time that my friend Andreas showed up. I was so looking forward to shooting with him. I showed him my lens and he tried shooting with it and got the same results. @%$%^&@ Sigma Lens!!!!!! Ugh!! Such a beautiful day, with wonderful light, two friends to shoot with, lots of eagles and the opportunity to make some great images and my freaking lens fails. My two week old lens fails.
The good news is that I now know just how good Lock and Dam 14 is and Jeanne said that we should go down for a whole weekend sometime next season. Now I’ve got to hassle with Sigma again and be without a long lens for who knows how long.
Oh, well as Andreas would say at least we got to see some specular eagles flying, be outdoors and have a camera in hand. That’s pretty good.
Enjoy your week, thanks for stopping by and be careful.
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