Caen Hill (Friday 4th June 2021)

I'd seen on Facebook that there was a swan family with cygnets on the Caen Hill lock flight which brought into focus the reminder that I had yet to visit Caen Hill this year.

I wanted to experiment with my cameras and settings as I was testing new equipment, so I put my oldest lens, a Tokina 19-35 lens that I used to use with Pentax film cameras up to the eighties, onto my newest K-50, and adjusted its camera settings.

To extend the reach of my 55-300mm telephoto and hopefully try some people-watching I added a 1.4x teleconverter to my K-5 camera. I'd used the converter in the past but as it made the camera very long, heavy and unwieldy I'd had problems with blurry images, from camera shake or slow shutter speeds or both, which I hoped to alleviate with the more forgiving higher ISO possible with camera bodies these days.

When I arrived at the top of the flight I soon saw the cob swan in a side pound at the Monument lock, and the pen sitting on a nest, so the family I'd seen pictured must have been at the Foxhangers end.

As well as the swans I took several wildflower shots and some people shots. The settings I was trying for the Tokina lens were not a success and I had to do a lot of work on the images to make them usable (first Extra) before revising the settings, but most of the long lens shots were OK, though the difficulties and handicaps of operating the lens off tripod meant that I removed the converter again afterwards. However the blip and the second Extra show that it can be an effective tool.

As a bonus, I briefly ran into Number147's partner there and so got to say hello and stroke their puppy Hetty.

Day 16 - Decaying Budding Irises  #1  #2
Tuesday 8.6.2021 (1458 hr)

Blip #3446 (#3196 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #004
Blips/Extras In 2021 #102/266 + #064/100 Extras
Day #4089 (900 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2589 (#2430 + 159 in archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-5 and Pentax HD P-DA 55-300 mm F4-5.8 ED WR lens with 1.4x Pentax teleconverter

Caen Hill series
Swan series
Kennet and Avon Canal series
Canals series

In The Woodland Garden, 4 June 2020 (Flickr album of 12 photos)

Caen Hill, 4 June 2021 (Flickr album of 28 photos)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Katherine Priddy - Eurydice (2021)
Hear on Mark Radcliffe's Folk Show (Radio Two)

One Year Ago:
Abstract Thursday (Doodle)