I shot this with a 70-300 Quantaray lens, on a 2x vivitar tele-converter. You've got to be careful with the use of these off-brand lenses or you could end up with chromatic aberration. They do not have nikon's nano-crystal coatings. Using teleconverters on any lens will dictate the need for compensation for the light which gets reduced, or bounced around inside the converter itself . Usually this means opening the aperture a couple of stops; or increasing the exposure time a couple of stops. On old/cheap teleconverters I think they used less than permanent ink, or paint to coat the inside of the metal casing. Shiny metal spots, as well as optics which haven't had the edges gone over with something black, allow light to bounce around inside the housing splitting up into cyan and red rainbows. This reeks havoc on a couple pixels around the edge of the subjects which you're shooting (generally when you're shooting with too wide of an aperture for the given light) .
One of the things I noticed when I parked and walked over to the lake, was three or four alligators that seemed to be racing across the lake. While I was clicking away at them, this blackbird kept on flying out of the willow you can see in the frame;swooping down at the water, hoovering there and doing all kinds of acrobatics. Curiosity got the best of me and I set a focus trap (that quantaray lens wont autofocus or meter on the old vivitar tele) and the mystery was solved when I got home and looked at the files. That blackbird was having mid air dogfights with a dragonfly.
Good morning Lakeland!
