Red-Shouldered Hawk in Celebration, Florida with a Nikon D800E
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, prior to the San Francisco 49ers successfully taking down the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game, I took a walk with my Nikon D800E and the Nikkor 28-300 3.5-5.6 VR lens around my Celebration, Florida neighborhood. .
The D800E is absolutely not considered a sports & wildlife camera, because it doesn’t have a deep buffer nor does it shoot a billion frames-per-second like the new flagship, mirrorless bodies are capable of doing. I did run up against the D800E’s buffer on some of the bursts I shot, but the accuracy of the D800E’s autofocus was tremendous. The camera really only missed focus, when I screwed up, not the equipment itself. Additionally the 28-300 3.5-5.6 Nikkor zoom lens did a really nice job capturing the hawk in a “wildlife” type of situation, something that the lens isn’t exactly built to do. This walk-about setup performed well as a “jack-of-all-trades” kit and while a perched hawk isn’t exactly as difficult as capturing a bird in flight from a long distance away, I was happy with the performance of the camera, the lens and with my new friend, Mr. Hawk.
I hope you enjoy the images….and Go Niners!
