Bird Outing with the DA 55-300mm

It's been a long time that I've been shooting birds, and I figured my DA 55-300mm needed the workout. Birding is a particularly challenging endeavour as one has to first of all find a good spot, know the best time to shoot and more importantly be able to execute when the time comes and the bird is in sight.





Well these images of the Olive-backed Sunbird were the result of the three ingredients coming together. This little bird is about 10 cm from tip to tail and fly very quickly with their short wings. With my camera on Auto ISO matched with a fast shutter speed and Quick Shift on the lens, I managed to get some nice shots when the birds made their hurried nectar hopping visit to a clump of heliconia flowers. Oblivious to my presence, I easily squeezed off frame after frame. And just as quickly they flew off. All shots uncropped on the K-7.

New and Old

Came across this mature tree during a walk through the park and was immediately struck by the contrast between the rough edges of it's bark and the small plant growing upwards towards the light using the tree as a foothold. An interplay of different stages of growth, of soft, pliable and flexible versus the old, firm and secure. Converted this image in Photoshop with Silver Efex Pro.

DA 55-300mm - a nice tele zoom

Quite a long time ago I asked a good friend of mine to source out a DA 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED, a consumer grade tele zoom that was been getting very favorable reviews from Pentax users. I had just about forgotten all about it when my I got a call to say he had one waiting for me.





I already had a DA 50-200mm, a very nice and compact tele zoom that had been around for quite some time. It's a great lens but if you need to shoot subjects at slightly longer distances like birds or stealth candids, it often felt that 200mm was just not long enough. So it was the attraction of good optical performance and that longer 300mm reach which got me to consider this lens. A price drop also made it all all the more attractive.



Physically, it is comparable to the DA 50-200mm, except when it is zoomed out to 300mm when the longer barrel extesion becomes apparent. The lens is a variable aperture zoom where the maximum aperture changes as the focal length increases. Starting a f/4 at 55 mm, it changes to f/4.5 at 107 mm, f/5.6 at 190 mm and finally to f/5.8 from 260 mm onwards. Minimum focusing distance is 1.4m.



Optically it is pretty good, images are mostly sharp and contrasty. There is some light fall off at maximum aperture but not very significant and nothing that can't be corrected in post processing. About the only criticism of this lens is some green color fringing when shooting backlit subjects and specular highlights. Again this can largely be corrected during post processing. The other issue is auto focusing. This lens has a long focus throw and if used in low light or low subject contrast situations, the camera's AF will occasionally hunt to lock focus. This is largely a camera body related issue but having Quick Shift does help in such situations. Aside from these niggling issues, this lens comes highly recommended.





These images were taken at a recent wakeboarding event using the K20D.