Last week we welcomed a new gadget into the family: a beautiful Canon L 70-200mm zoom lens. It is now attached to David's camera mostly full-time; with me using the wide-angle lens, we make a good team.
The zoom arrived mid-week last week, so at first it could only be tested on things around the farm where we live. But David had a great time bothering the chickens and hunting other creatures from the bushes.
Pondering life during an evening walk.
Portrait of a chicken.
Pheasants
Bunny!
Full moon over Great Milton
One of the coolest things about this new lens is that it has image stabilization, which means you don't need a tripod to photograph things in low light, or the moon! After a few exposure adjustments, David took the above photo by just walking outside and pointing the camera at the sky. Seriously cool.
On Saturday we took the new lens to another local parish church to really put it to the test. This church is in Thame, which is 7 miles northeast of us. It was quite a large and nice church and full of zooming opportunities. The visit was made even more pleasant by friendly ladies bustling around decorating it with harvest-related items.
Exterior (by me with the wide-angle)
Interior (by me with the wide-angle)
A king and an angel near the ceiling, beautifully captured by the zoom. We could never get such photos before!
Blowing bubbles? Mouth full of candy? I dunno!
Victorian (1800s) stained glass window of St. Nicholas of Myra, of Christmas fame.
Wall painting of the Virgin Mary (once part of a Pieta), c. 1500. Left photo with wide-angle by me; right photo with zoom by David. This illustrates one of the reasons we're so happy to have the zoom lens - you can walk further back from details like this and avoid distortion by shooting straight on.
Churchyard path, by David.
On our way back to the car from the church, we happened to chat briefly with the owner of this lovely 1966 Land Rover. He saw our cameras and approached us to ask if we happened to know any celluloid camera enthusiasts, as he had one to sell (a camera, not an enthusiast). We weren't much help there, but we ended up learning that he owned the old Land Rover as well as the newer black one nearby, and he was going to drive the old one from London to Brighton as part of a Land Rover club the following day.
Thame was a nice market town and had a lot of old half-timbered houses too:
Another church (Kingsey, in Buckinghamshire) presented itself along the road while the sun was still shining, so we stopped briefly for a photo:
