A Lot of "Bucks"...

...for your money...

and for my lens...

Tuesday 22nd July

I told my friend Des on the phone that I had got the closest shots of deer, ever, in my entire life.

Essential to go LARGE

Now, I am no Max Ellis, stuffing a wideangle lens up a stag's nostril at sunrise, having crawled on hands and knees, to within inches, infantry-style.

Nor are any of the deer I've ever seen, let alone photographed been in deer-parks, like the ones that Max gets intimate with...

Having been brought up in the New Forest, where deer are (relatively) wild and have big wide open spaces in which to run away from you from, I've only rarely got more than a sighting though with digital and longer and better (and relatively) cheaper lenses over the years, the task is a good deal easier.

This herd of about 30 fallow, half of which were stags, with a couple of fawns, were in a field, with sheep. They seem to prefer to stay in such fields, more and more these days. The only other occasion when I was in such close sight of such a herd, the lens I was using was so shoddy, none of the pics were usable.

So, this is a fraction of the group. I had the Tamron SP 70-300mm VC on the DX D7000 anyway and took almost 200 shots on 'drive', many were rubbish but you just keep taking them, partly to stop you getting too excited - it gives you something to do! I then added the Sigma 1.4x teleconverter, which then gave an equivalent focal length of 560mm - in other words, over ten times life size!

Helpfully, the VC vibration control does work quite effectively with this combo - you would normally have used up to 1/1000 sec to offset shake without it. I also stopped the lens down, to improve the image quality. A teleconverter, of any quality matched with a zoom, especially an extended zoom range (they on suggest expensive pro 70-200mm f2.8's generally to use a converter with.

Which then gave me an image with a quite heavy out of focus branch sticking right up through the bottom of the pic, and across the deer as well. I was standing in a hedge at the time...

Cloning this out was impossible as it was just too big and included bits of deer!

See if you can see where the remains of it is....? But, by isolating that area, and over many adjustments, I lightened and lightened it and changed contrast - and colour! What was just an idea turned out remarkably well; it's very compelling and compulsive to get a good image into a better one.

I did clone out a fence post though. Not the nice subdued one on the left but the bright shiny one sticking out the deer's head! That was an antler that shouldn't have been there!!

Yes, there are stunning photos out there of stags at dawn, rutting and bashing antlers, taken by wildlife pro's from hides and using lenses the size of Germany and costing thousands - and I haven't photographed them. But I hadn't set out to get this group either. Just a nice walk in the countryside, with a good quality but not professional lens....

though this group did seem to be more concerned with chasing off the swarming flies than the photographer calmly poking a round object through the trees at them.

And before you all complain - I purposefully left the does that they are protecting in - and flowing out the frame. This indicates a bigger number than could be squeezed in my telephotic (is that even a word??) frame.