Morning At Brazos Bend State Park With A Canon 5DSR and 500mm Prime Lens

Portrait of a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

I recently ordered (and finally received) a Canon 5DSR camera body. The thought of 50mp to play around with, to crop away, to do with as I wish, was too great not to pass up for a landscape, birdlife/wildlife and portrait photographer such as myself.

To further break the budget, I purchased several lenses including a Canon 500mm f4L prime super-telephoto. Can you say “photographer heaven”?

Even though the temps here in southeast TX are in the triple digits and extremely humid, I took this camera/lens combo out to Brazos Bend State Park one morning. Actually, I’d gone the day before, as well, with a 1.4x extender attached to the 500mm to make it a 700mm. On that day, I was not impressed, which was too bad since there was quite a bit of birdlife out there during the hottest part of the day (around 1PM). I apparently didn’t do my microfocus adjustments that well with the extender on, because all but 6 photos (ok, not stellar photos), displayed some back-focus issues.

So, I removed the extender that evening, re-adjusted the microfocus, and returned to the park the next morning with just the 500mm focal length. I was pleased and proud with the images that resulted, and even happier with the resolution of the images after much cropping, such as the image above, which is about a 33% crop.