Lazing on a Sunday afternoon…

Positivity on 2021-12-05

Summer has started a little hesitantly where I live, but the first Sunday in December was a lovely day, barely a hint of a cloud, bright sunshine, but not too hot. The reflection in the water is pristine, so there’s not a breath of wind. It’s a good time to relax, soak in the sunshine, and maybe listen to Queen’s song.

Shot with the new Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II on a Sony A1. The shot above was take at 111mm, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 200 (due to auto-ISO). The image is uncropped.

To demonstrate that it wasn’t just the hippos taking a leisurely approach to the day, here are a couple of lions luxuriating in the warmth. The younger of the two clearly thinks the older makes a good footrest.

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This shot was taken at 148mm, but all the other settings are the same.

The Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS mark II is proving to be a very pleasant lens to use.

Wild black kite – got any spare?

Positivity on 2021-10-30

The wild dogs get fed, and the local black kites are ready to souvenir anything that gets missed. Yes, kites are predatory, but they are perfectly willing to scavenge.

This image was shot with the Sony 135mm GM lens on a Sony A1, at f/1.8 1/10000 ISO 100. What you are looking at is a 2500×1667 crop from the frame. Arguably, this wasn’t the best choice of lens for this subject, but Sony has yet to make the 200mm f/2 GM or 300mm f/2.8 GM that I’d dearly love to be using here. That said, the 135 GM is so sharp, I can get away with such a savage crop. I really like having the extra headroom on the shutter speed, being able to go above 1/8000 all the way to 1/32000 – it effectively gives me two more stops before I need to think about stopping the lens down.

Cheetah intensity

Positivity on 2021-10-28

Kulinda the cheetah is prowling. Not moving quickly, but intent on examining what the keepers have done to her space (she has been out for just a few minutes). She has come quite close to the window. This is a completely uncropped frame (and you know how much I love to crop!) – no room to crop, but I’m willing to put up with that on this one.

This image was shot with the Sony 135mm GM lens on a Sony A1, at f/1.8 1/3200 ISO 100. You could argue that I should perhaps have shot this at maybe f/8 to get a greater depth of field, but I like that only her head is fully in focus, courtesy of animal eye AF in the A1.

I can’t resist. Here’s another image from shortly before, as she stalked past the window. This image was shot with the same settings, and it, too, is uncropped. The early morning sun is low in the sky, but it’s already bright and clear (look at how strong her shadow is); there were no clouds this morning.

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