New Toys

 

Around this time last year I bought the Canon R7 and finally this week I managed to let go of the money to complete the combo with the RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1L IS USM. This seems to be the new Canon mirrorless standard set up for birders/naturalists. Weighs in at just over 2kg, which for a 500mm quality lens is brilliant.  The main appeal for me is the quality zoom which enables an instant shift from photographing butterflies/moths and reptiles in macro to zooming out for birds. Of course the zoom also means it's suitable for photographing large mammals and cetaceans too. This is a birder/naturalist-photographer's ideal set up. Even for real photographers this is a decent bit of back up kit. I waited for the lens to get near the £2K mark before I could force myself to part with money that I could otherwise spend on travel/kebabs and last year the camera itself cost me about £1.5K so the whole combo is around £3.5K so not cheap but I split the payment over a year by buying the camera last year and just using my old lenses (with a cheap adapter). which has been great anyway. and then stepped up all the way now.   

I purchased them from HDEW cameras which are not only based in Hackbridge/Beddington Farmlands but also seem to be very well (the best I could find) priced HERE. 

I also recently bought a Zoom H5 handy sound recorder (thanks for the recommendation Arjun) as I've got sick of getting wrapped up in wires while carrying round a shotgun mic. It's very cheap (only about £160) and seems to do the trick- I can just attach it to my camera bag and have it recording without it getting in the way at all. The push on wind guard is the only annoying thing as it's easy to knock off.