Lucky day for eagle sightings

This Friday the 13th turned out to be a lucky day for me. I met up with some friends and spent the day at the Arboretum. We had planned to go outside if the weather was nice and take some photos and it turned out to be another gorgeous day.

I have always wanted to try out the Canon 100-400mm telephoto lens and today was my chance. A friend was kind enough to entrust me with his lens. OMG! My first realization- I need to work out if I ever want to own one of these lenses. I may be 98lbs, but I’m scrappy! I have spent years lugging around an slr with a zoom lens but this was a whole different animal and today I wasn’t going to use a tripod.

As the afternoon progressed, we were fortunate to see several bald eagles at Duck Bay near the visitor center. I did the best I could with the lens and managed not to tip over backward trying to capture the eagles soaring overhead. And all had a good laugh at me and the monstrosity of a camera + lens. I must say I fared pretty well considering I had the image-stabilizer turned off the entire time quite by accident! It should be interesting to see the results when the image-stabilizer is turned on. Sharp- I bet.

The most memorable part of the afternoon was when we were walking back through Azalea Lane with the glorious sun shining down upon us and when we looked up at the clear, blue sky we saw a kettle of eagles (six to be exact). They were too high up in the thermals to even attempt to photograph and beside my back, hands and fingers couldn't take any more. At least there were other witnesses.

Just imagine how sharp these could have been if the image-stabilizer was turned on! Oh well, it was fun and a good learning experience.