Burnside's Heron

I spotted this Great Blue Heron a few days ago while walking on the Antietam Battlefield. Note: Clicking on the pictures will take you to my Flickr photo sharing site where you can see full size images as well as more photos of feathered friends on the Antietam Battlefield.

The Heron fishes the Antietam Creek just below Burnside Bridge and he keeps me just far enough away to almost get a picture out of this old Olympus camera.

Almost, but not quite. Or maybe it’s just that I am not smart enough to get closer to him. In either case, it’s more about soaking up some sunshine, breathing some fresh air and trying to hang onto whatever is left of my sanity than about the picture. Or the bird.


I have posted some more photos of this guy on my Flickr photo-sharing site. The full size images seen there are cropped from a 2560 x 1920 pixel original off the camera. I can get higher pixel density off the camera but I can’t do anything to improve the little piece of glass that sits in front. I need a real telephoto lens. Like the 300mm auto stabilized one in my 35mm camera bag.

I need a new camera (and a new life). It’s time for a digital SLR.

My Olympus C5050 has been a good camera (mostly) and I have a history with Olympus digital cameras starting with a C2020 when it was one of only about half a dozen 2 mega pixel cameras on the market. That one was replaced with a C4040 after I bounced the 2020 off the seat of my jeep. I loved the C4040. When it was stolen, I replaced it with the C5050. I don’t like the C5050 as much as I did the 4040 because of changes to knobs and controls etc.

When I bought the C5050 my Canon EOS-A2 35mm SLR was still my primary camera. There were digital SLRs on the market then but only one with a large format, full frame CCD and that one cost over 6 grand.

I told myself that I would hold out for digital SLR until Canon’s large format CCD was available in a camera body that sold for less than 2K and was compatible with my EOS lenses.

It looks like the EOS-5D is getting there.

I am interested in hearing from anyone with experience buying Canon camera bodies online.

Any advice about pitfalls to avoid? Things to look out for?