Big beasties

24 November

It’s happened then; a Russian jet has been shot down has been shot down by Turkish fighters for straying into their airspace. This had been warned about once Russia began bombing ISIS and to some extent it was inevitable that it would happen. On the face of it is seems cut and dried, but is it? Looking at the map of the area, Turkish airspace is a quite a small corridor at that point. Is it possibly a mistake by the Russian air-crew? It’s possible you know.

But there again, I should have thought that it was clear that it was not an intend incursion. And yet Turkey is saying that the Russians were warned ten times to steer clear. The speed of these airplanes nowadays is so fast that it’s possible for a jet to fly into and out of areas which they were not entitled to enter. Right now it’s a case of ‘he said, he said’, but even so, for the amount of time the Russian airplane was over Turkey was so short that Turkey looks to be a tad OTT about it.

Last Saturday my copy of AP arrived, complete with a couple of inserts. I had a look through them before I ditched into the recycling. One of the items in there was for SD cards, that’s what I use in my D5200. Currently it has a 16gig card in there, and I’ve never filled that yet. And yet one of the cards on show was 256gig card. I know that some of the full frame and large format cameras do have large resolution levels, but 256gig cards – I don’t think so. The largest card I have filled is a 4gig CF card used in my A350.

It’s not just memory cards that are getting bigger either, what do you make of this beast …  http://wildlifecapturingtimes.com/2015/11/23/does-better-photography-gear-mean-better-photos/   I saw this on Facebook this morning. I’m not all that sure this one though. Having looked through my Sigma lens catalogue, I’ve found it in there. It’s listed as APC 200-500mm f2.8 / 400-1000mm f5.6 when an attachment is used. It also has a battery pack to go with it and it weighs in at 15.77 kilos. A quick look at my normal photo-kit dealer … http://www.wexphotographic.com/search/?q=sigma%20200-500  shows it’s a snip at £12699. But it’s a special order only lens.

This one is a zoom lens, but there are prime lenses on the market too. The longest lens Sigma does is an APO 800mm f5.6 and sells from the same dealer for £4298, and is again a special order item. Oh yes, in case you don’t know what the difference between a prime and zoom lenses, zooms can be moved, or zoomed out to cover distances between the two figures in the specs; a prime is set to just one focal distance. Then there’s the 1200mm Canon lens that was on sale in the UK a few months ago.

I’m not sure the normal standard tripod would strong enough to hold such gear. I do know I couldn’t hand hold one like that in the link photo! The longest focal lengthen lens I have is a Sigma 70-300mm tele-zoom. It’s not a bad lens but it is about as heavy as I can normally manage. I wonder how many of the longer primes have been sold. They are obviously a specialist lenses and not for the average man in the street user – or women either. Would I like one? Nahh, I can’t see me ever using it.

Now hand on a mow, let me have a look … Nope, can’t find em. I do have a 500mm mirror, or reflex lens which haven’t used all that much but I do know that I have at least two shots taken with it, but as I said, I can’t find them.   

So, today’s shot is one I got a West Midlands Safari Park earlier this year … A reminder of summer.

Today’s funny …

Two blondes fell down a hole. One said, "Its dark in here isn't it?" The other replied, "I don't know; I can't see."