Mid-Atlantic
Tour
2006
Chincoteague VA, Cape Hatteras NC,
Bombay Hook DE
October 23-25, 2006
For my fall vacation I
decided to spend a full week touring some of the mid-Atlantic birding
hotspots, hoping to both test out my new photography equipment (after
recently switching from Nikon to Canon) in preparation for my
Everglades visit this coming January, and hopefully to collect a few
good images along the way.
My initial plans were to visit both the coast and also to loop around
and hit some inland spots around my old home of Washington D.C. (red
route below), and possibly also to venture into my even older home of
PA (green route):
Due to poor weather (a cold front brought in heavy clouds and some
occasional drizzle), I ended up shortening my trip to 3 days and
visiting only the three big hotspots: Chincoteague VA, Bombay Hook DE,
and Cape Hatteras (actually, Pea Island) NC. Starting from
Durham, NC, you can see that even the reduced trip was quite long.
Despite the lousy weather, I was able to snag a few decent images, as
shown below by location. Click on the "More" links to see the full
album at each location.
But first, a quick review of the equipment used on this tour...
Equipment
I recently switched from
Nikon to Canon. During this trip I tested out both my new Canon EOS 30D
digital camera (8.3 Megapixels) and my new Canon
EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM
lens, pictured together below:
This lens is a fairly big, though with some effort I found I could
pretty easily master it in the field. Unfortunately, I made the
mistake of buying it used and found that the sharpness of the lens was
somewhat lacking; I have since returned it and am now using a much
sharper lens combination: the Canon
EF 400mm f/4 DO IS USM, and its
little brother
the Canon
EF 400mm f/5.6L USM. The camera itself (Canon 30D) worked
flawlessly, and I have since purchased a second 30D to both act as a
backup to my primary camera and also to use for my tripod-mounted Orion
telescope, which is shown below:
For this trip I used the Orion
with the old Nikon
D50 (6.1 Megapixels),
which has since been retired. I now use this lens exclusively with the
Canon 30D
body. This is a fairly heavy rig -- notice the rubber pipe
insulation taped to the central column, providing padding when slung
over the shoulder. Carrying this thing around all day is an excellent
form of exercise!
Unfortunately, a stiff wind kept up all day long, blowing tiny sand
particles which collected into a film on the lens and degraded image
quality considerably; regular swabs with the Zeiss
Lens Cleaning
fluid were necessary to maintain image quality.
next page: Outer
Banks, NC
