photoartflightOsprey Hovering Before Diving
At the end of the year I go through my backup drives to cleanup and delete files no longer needed. I found this Osprey image taken years ago on one of those backup drives. This was taken at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, New Jersey. Image taken with the Sigma 300-800mm f/5.6 lens @ 800mm. This was one of my favorite lenses back then. A beast to haul around, but once you were setup in an area, you could really get amazing results working that area for images. It did well with flying birds on a Canon 1D style camera body back then. Between the 1D mk IV body, heavy duty Gitzo tripod and Wimberly gimbal head you were over 20 pounds. So you did not roam around to much with this combo. But it was definitely a fun combo to use and produced extremely sharp images. For birds in flight it was great because you could zoom out to find them flying in the distance, then zoom in to get the shot. I do miss it from time to time but I make due with the 400mm Canon DO and Tamron 150-600mm lenses with teleconverters. Not as sharp as the 300-800mm f/5.6 Sigma, but close enough and my back appreciates the lighter load to carry.
More Sigma 300 – 800mm images below —
photoartflight 
Great collection, Reed!
Thanks Steve! It was a fun lens to use! Got a lot of great images with it!
Sensational photos!!
Thanks so much! They were fun to photograph! Plus the “SigMonster” let me get very close on some!
Beautiful action and they are all remarkably clear! Do you use a tripod or mono pod?
What a great group of bird portraits you’ve presented here. That splashing swan is so dynamic.
Thanks Steve! It really let me get close for more detail and closer portraits! Some I also used a 1.4x or 2x Teleconverter to get even closer.
Wow, what a beautiful bird photo serie! Love it..
Thanks Greta! Birds are one of my favorite subjects!
Wonderful, beautiful collection of captures, Reed!!!
Thanks Donna! It is always fun to see what you can photograph! Also trying different combinations of Teleconverters to get even closer with different techniques to still have sharpness with Multiple Teleconverters.