I got my hands on a 200-500mm f/5.6 lens a few days ago. It’s heavy, and bulky, and big, and kind of enormous.1 But 500mm reach is interesting to me, and I am looking forward to experimenting with it.
I’ve almost forgotten how to deal with auto-focus, oddly, as I’ve been hand-focusing my vintage lenses all spring and summer
I have taken a few photographs to test it. The light in these will look sickly and awful, but that’s because it is. Smoke from the fires, and haze from the sea are making good old fashioned smog like nobody’s business. The air is terrible, and everything has an awful, brown tint to it. While better than it was last week, it looks gross. Like living in Delhi, or east of Los Angeles in the late 70s.
But I took pictures anyway. I’m learning to use this beast, and all of these are hand-held and auto-focused. I’ve almost forgotten how to deal with auto-focus, oddly, as I’ve been hand-focusing my vintage lenses all spring and summer, and I am finding a few quirks. It will hunt quite a bit when trying to get it to grab a lizard, going all the way out to infinity and then having to come back, which isn’t exactly fast. There’s a lockout from 6M to Infinity, I kind of wish it was 5m to closest focus!
It seems modestly sharp when I can get it in focus. The image stabilization works pretty well, allowing me to take hand-held shots at 500mm in marginal light. Alas, what I really got it for was taking pictures of birds in flight or maybe action shots of surfers, but zero visibility and smog kind of throw a kink in that plan, so dragons it is. Maybe we’ll have a blue sky next week.
Until then, behold:
The first gallery is random shots just before sunset from the day the lens arrived. Extremely low light, but you get a new lens, you take a pic. It’s the rule. The telephone pole is nearly 400 feet away, and you can read the markings clearly with a 500mm shot, handheld, in very low light. I took a picture of the sun to give an idea of just how icky it was.
The Stump Dragon was molting on Sunday. Again, light was bad, like it has been all week, but I never seem to see a molting lizard at the same time as I have a camera in hand, so I took some shots. I actually was lucky to get these as I spotted the molt Saturday, when all the scales on the front half were opaque, but it was while he was running to hide in the crack in the stump. Gone before I could retrieve a camera, alas. I would have liked to have gotten pics then, as they look almost like they are covered in fungus or something since the skin comes off of the scales rather than in one smooth shed like a snake.
In the past the lizards I spotted molting would be out of sight for a day or two and not reappear until after they’d shed. But this time I got to see stumpy here changing out of the worn out duds and putting on the Sunday Go to Meeting clothes.
My favorites are the ones facing away. You can see half the skin is old, half new.
Early this afternoon as I was headed out I caught the stump dragon showing off some. There are interlopers trying to steal the range from the stump to the chair, including a tiny but ridiculously brave male who is only three molts in and thinks he’s king of the world. So after shedding the old clothes, it was time to get out there and defend some territory.
For this and the following galleries, I have included both images cropped to refine the composition, and full sized, to give an idea of just how much of the frame these little guys are actually taking. You can get mightily close with 500mm of reach!
Also, nothing is photoshopped. Mostly I clicked “Auto” for sharpening and saturation in Nikon Capture, cropped, then dumped the file to jpg. What you see is what I got.
These first images are just after noon on the brick that sits half way between the stump and the chair — the range the Stump Dragon seems to have claimed the last week or two.
And here’s the young buck. This male has been around about two months, and is still barely more than bite sized. I’ve seen three color changes, so he may have molted three or four times, but that’s all. I actually have pics of him before the most recent molt around here somewhere, but for now the ones I took this evening.
He’s belligerent. Has been since the very beginning when he didn’t even have any color, which is kind of hilarious. Doing pushups and acting all threatening when he’s an inch long. Who knows if he’ll last long enough to make a breeding season after he matures, but for now he’s trying to make his presence known.
He’s also a special challenge as he tends to run around a try to be threatening to all of the others — the Trash Dragon, the Cardboard Dragon, and the Cactus Dragon — so he’ll sprint from one perch to the next, stopping and raising his tail or puffing up his neck before facing a different direction to try and intimidate the next guy. I get a few seconds or maybe a couple of minutes to compose and take some shots, then he’ll start sprinting around and I have to compose and focus quickly, hope I get a shot, then try to follow him to the next place he runs.
Of course, he is only running around and acting tough when Stump Dragon is elsewhere as, again, he’s literally bite sized. He wouldn’t survive an actual challenge.
My favorites are the last two, where he’s posing facing northwest, toward the Garbage Dragon. He’s saying “Rawr! I’m a Dragon! Fear me!” I don’t know if anyone else outside this territory actually cares, yet. It’s not breeding season anymore and most of the others are far more timid than they were in the late spring when they were courting. But the little guy is trying.
The ones with the neck display are facing northeast, for the benefit of the Cactus Dragon, and the ones atop the flat log are facing south, keeping an eye out for the Cardboard Dragon.
The one that DOES care is the Dragon who claims this range. After seeing the belligerent baby showing off on the stump, the full sized Stump Dragon chased him off and hung out there for a while.
Looking good with the fresh new skin! I get it. New clothes, you want to show ’em off to the world.
I also took pics of a hatchling in the evening. I think this is the one I had to escort out of the house a few times last week after a molt. This is a VERY small lizard, likely only two weeks out of the nest, and usually found hiding in the planter next to the steps to the front porch.
So, there are possibilities. It’s not exactly a carrying-around lens, or one of those innocuous do-all lenses that are great for street photography. But I bet I can get a great picture of the moon if the smoke clears out some before it is full again! And, when I get sick of lugging the extra five pounds around I’ll sell it on the e bays and find something else to play with instead.
Until then, “Rawr! I’m a Dragon!”
1 That’s what She Said