Following the theft of my D90 and 80-400 lens in California I am bereft.
I must buy camera and bird lens now. Ebay gets me an immaculate D300 and a Tokina 300 2.8 for next to nothing. New camera equipment is a really bad investment. As the big companies bring out new models, the nec plus ultra of 5 years ago is only worth $200. This suits me fine as I really do not need the features that the most recent cameras vaunt.
Serious lens for very little money.
My new lens arrives minutes after the boat. Like a spoilt child I do not know which of my new toys I should play with first. I mount the lens and to my distress I find I have bought a lens that lacks two important letters, AF. My new lens only focusses manually. No wonder it was so cheap.
Anyway today I take it out to see if I can use it to any effect.
Blue Rock Thrush
Great White Egret
Windswept White Wagtail. Click on these photos to get Hi res.
Greenshanks. Edward I was known as Longshanks.
Mr Kentish Plover
Mrs Kentish Plover But I dillied and dallied, Dallied and dillied; Lost me way and don’t know where to roam. And you can’t trust a “Special” Like the old-time copper When you can’t find your way home.
I think I will keep this lens.
Weighs a ton
The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond 
That’s a big un! Must be a good 3kg to haul about down in the marsh – makes my old Alpa look lightweight. Auto-focus is great for sports photography and for the snap-shot but if you’re not in a hurry then manual can be better as you can select where the focus actually is rather than where the camera thinks it is. With long, wide aperture, lenses things snap easily on and out of focus and you can get pictorial effects that the AF will never see. I still have a Kilfitt Zoomar 300mm F4 lens, http://captjack.exaktaphile.com/Kilfitt%20page.htm, plus a converter that takes it to 600mm. Great lens but the combination of the Alpa and the big lens really needed a support of some kind for comfortable shooting – I used a gunstock support like the one in Capt Jack’s pictures but a lightweight monopod was good. Have fun and hope there’s some dry weather for painting the new Dileas.
Wow what a Kilar! Would it fit a nikon? Although originally mortified by not having AF, I had the best fun using the Tokina yesterday. Not much good for birds in flight.