Early birthday present

I got my birthday present from my parents today. It had the company name in big red letters on the box, which by itself didn't really mean anything to me. It's not like it said "This is a camera store in NY" or anything. So I googled the name, and it came up with camera stuff. So that confirmed what I guessed: zooooooom lens. A big one. I waited all the way until Hubby got home, which was a few hours, because I had to be there to sign for the box. So in those few hours I was getting more and more excited as I grew more and more sure of what was in the box. Right weight, right size for a big lens.

Hubby got home and pretty much said what are you waiting for. He's such a bad influence! His justification was it would affect what he got me, like if we had to get a new tripod to support the monster (we don't, it works great).

So inside the box: a Nikkor 200-400 zoom lens with vibration reduction, along with a nifty travel case. (lots of thick padding!)

So here we go: zoom pictures of cat poop:

What. It was like he was begging for his picture to be taken. We were already out there playing with the lens, so I had to practice! (slow shutter is what is causing thr blur.) Anyway, that was 100% crop. He was about 25 feet away.

And Saffron was about the same distance; these two are both 100%. I wanted to see if you could read the tag. It was washed out a little, so had to do some tweaking in Aperture.

I was going to show a picture taken with the 70-300mm lens, and draw a little box to show the relative size of the field of view on the new lens, but I messed up.

But here is an actual photographic test. Although not as important as the ability to capture cat shit as it's coming out, bokeh is a good quality to have in a lens. Apparently "good bokeh" is when the out of focus background is really diffuse and doesn't show any hint of structure:

It helps in this picture that the leaves had some sideways sunlight to light them up nicely, but I think this is good bokeh.

Here's 100% crop of Biscuit's other end at about 10 feet away.

But anyway, Thank You so much Daddy! I love this thing already. Do you know I almost drove up to the eagles as soon as I had decided what was in the box? Don't actually know if any eagles are out, but still. I was totally gonna do it.

~~END~~