First outings with the Canon SX50 HS

I bought the SX50 in early October 2013 and wanted to see what it and I were capable of before my trip to Guadeloupe in November. I started going to the Scrape hide at Sandwich Bay as it was a good place to more or less guarantee something to photograph and I could do it from the comfort? of a bench. Although not large, the Scrape offered the opportunity to try the camera out over various distances - it is capable of a massive 200 x digital zoom - albeit with drastic loss of quality but very useful for distant bird ID. Well the Scrape didn't let me down, with one of the first birds I photographed being a Jack snipe, not a brilliant photo by many standards, but I was delighted with it at the time.

The Jack snipe was shortly followed by a Common snipe and then I found a rather tired Swallow at Sandwich Bay. The feather detail on the Swallow made me realise what could be achieved but it isn't always possible for many reasons, one being low light and hence slow shutter speeds which usually gives much poorer results. The image stabilisation on the SX50 seems pretty amazing and although I make use of whatever is around to jam or rest the camera against, I don't usually take a tripod with me, giving me great mobility.

The last subject I'll post here before the Guadeloupe trip was a Kestrel, hovering near the hide. Fortunately it remained for quite a while giving me chance to make some camera adjustments in between volleys of shots which was lucky as so many were rubbish. These probably turned out to be some of the best birds in flight shots I've yet managed, this being one of the cameras downfalls. Everything came right for these shots, there was enough light for a decent shutter speed, the sun was shining on the bird itself so it wasn't too silhouetted and it remained fairly constant in its hovering so I could get the camera to focus.

Although I still had lots to learn and I was destined to make lots of errors, I felt I was au fait enough with the camera for our big Caribbean adventure.