{"id":257,"date":"2020-06-01T11:40:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=257"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:03:17","slug":"2020-5-30-300mm-f28-is-l-102519","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=257","title":{"rendered":"300mm F2.8 IS L – 10\/26\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was time. <\/p>\n

The lens had arrived and I was ready. Packed a lunch and went out on the first available Saturday. I was headed up to the mountains, farther north than I had been before. Well, in Georgia. As we know a place in North Carolina is frequently visited. <\/p>\n

I had found a highway that would take me into the forest, and one park on the way that I figured would be a good place to stop and make a further plan from there. That didn\u2019t exactly work out however. I must have left the house before 5am, since at 6 I was at the park looking around in the dark. Like still very much dark. <\/p>\n

And cell service wasn\u2019t great up there, so I was kind of going in blind. I knew I would get to a town if I continued on that road long enough. <\/p>\n

However what I did wind up finding was nowhere I could park for free. All the parks or docks for the water were paid only. There were state parks I wasn\u2019t going to try at this point. And because it was just this windy trail alongside a mountain that I was entirely unfamiliar with, I was constantly pulling over to let people pass. But there were a lot of jerks riding my bumper that just frustrated me. I\u2019m not sure what they expected, should I just drive my car entirely off the cliff to let them pass? There are only so many spots to pull over. Why get so uncomfortably close when there isn\u2019t a spot?<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s how the morning went. For hours I was just driving trying to find a place I could actually get out and walk around. Mostly by sight because the GPS was spotty. Overall it was a learning experience, to plan the trip beforehand and have a backup in case it didn\u2019t work out. Also to figure out how to download a map offline so you could still just use GPS when the signal isn\u2019t good.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I gave up for one day. But I wasn\u2019t done yet, I was determined to use the new lens. I was avoiding local spots because I already get stopped by random people every time I go out. And that was just with my other equipment, imagine what this giant white beacon of a lens would bring.<\/p>\n

Thankfully on this particular day, no one approached me at least. Many watched at a distance and spoke too loudly about what I was doing. But I was in a very populated area so I knew what to expect. This isn\u2019t what I wanted to do but it was better than just going home without using my new lens. <\/p>\n

It was around 1 in the afternoon by the time I had arrived, and it had been cloudy overcast and scattered rain throughout the day. But I sat down by the waterside and started taking pictures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Needless to say I am thrilled with the result. Even in such poor lighting conditions I got a great moment of this Mallard doing a quick splash. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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These last two were cropped in quite a bit to just get the single subject, what I was actually getting out of the camera was a good bit more of the scene. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 160<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 160<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/1250 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 800<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This next one is one of my absolute favorites. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 320<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The ducks weren\u2019t the only visitors to the river that day, soon another guest would come gliding in. And I was there with the camera to capture it. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 320<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Unfortunately they landed on the far side, and facing away from me. So I wouldn\u2019t get any spectacular landing shot today. Back to the ducks, which I was trying my damnedest to get an interestingly composed shot. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/500 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 640<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It didn\u2019t happen in the end. They were both never looking outward at the same time, and then they moved along. As did I. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll also put these two next photos in this post, they were actually from 2 days before when I first received the new lens. But it was just out the window from my home and didn\u2019t have much of a story to make it into a separate post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/400 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 1000<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Canon 7D Mark II w\/300mm – 1\/400 Sec – F2.8 – ISO 250<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was time. The lens had arrived and I was ready. Packed a lunch and went out on the first available Saturday. I was headed up to the mountains, farther north than I had been before. Well, in Georgia. As we know a place in North Carolina is frequently visited. I had found a highway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1814,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/1814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}