Weekend, part deux.

Somewhat tired, we didn't get up the next morning until about 7am, and then hit Flamborough Head for a spot of sea-watching. This was not entirely successful, in part because it was a clear sunny day with visibility of around 20 miles, but also because we could not find Brett anywhere. Turns out he was there, somewhere, but he too could not conjure anything decent up. A few Terns went past, including one I felt was a Little, but too far out, and we added Guillemot and Razorbill to the trip list.

As nine o'clock approached, breakfast beckoned. Our landlady, in common with most people in Bridlington, enjoys a good Saturday night out, and told us in no uncertain terms that the earliest breakfast she would do would be at nine. For a lady of sixty-five if she was a day, she had clearly enjoyed herself a great deal, and confessed to being rather frail when we saw her a short while later. This did not stop her producing tea and coffee on demand though, followed by the world's largest breakfast. I ate the lot. To be fair I did not then eat again until about eight that evening, but I did spent a great deal of the morning groaning slightly, and clutching my enormous stomach. I may even have dropped off in the car....

Although it was tempting to return to Bempton, the car had a large puddle of coolant/Evian underneath it, so we decided it might be best to head South. Via Nottinghamshire for a well known Honey Buzzard site. Although the birds only showed between ten and twelve, they also showed almost constantly all the way through to about half-past one when we left, and more than likely continued showing. So much for local gen. As I know you are interested, this was indeed a filthy year-tick, which when I counted them up back at home, turned out to be #198. In context, at the same point last year, whilst not year-listing, I was on 245, so I am doing even better at not year-listing this year. Or I was just in denial last year perhaps? And in 2009, when I was year-listing, I had reached 269. Very pleasing indeed.

From Welbeck, we realised that it was only a detour of roughly forty miles to take in Frampton Marshes RSPB, which held a host of ticks for Nick. We decided to go for it and topped up the reserves of Evian. Another superb reserve awaited us, perfect water levels, heaps of waders. Slightly too much vegetation out in the middle, but what can you do? Finding whole and complete waders was the stuff of nightmares, but eventually we pieced together Ruff, Redshank, Wood Sandpiper, and best of all, Pectoral Sandpiper (199). The Red-necked Phalarope from the previous day had departed, and the Spotted Crake was hiding, so that was our lot, and with the thirsty car demanding more mineral water, we called it a day and nursed the car home at eighty.

A Weekend on the East Coast

If you can somehow ignore the mileage, somehow get over the obscene cost of petrol, then there is nothing like birding to show you different parts of the country, to give you a real appreciation for our diverse and beautiful landscape. If like me you live in a city, and you leave in the dark, then as day breaks you can be somewhere completely fabulous, a million miles away from the concrete and the mass of humanity. A couple of weeks ago I was on a Cornish headland at breakfast time on Saturday. Feeling, admittedly, like absolute shit, having driven through the night, but nonetheless thrilled at the scenery, the colour of the sea, the wet smell in the air, and the promise of what was to come, the journey behind me.

This Saturday at around the same time of day, I found myself in an entirely different landscape. Steep hills, wooded valleys, rolling moorland - the Peak District. Green everywhere, dotted with sheep, calm. But also forboding, hints of menace - snow fencing to protect the road, and signs that told you which routes were open. In winter I suspect it could be fairly unfriendly. Not today though, shirt sleeves weather, blue skies as we approached Arnfield Reservoir in the village of Tintwistle. I know what you're going to say. I said that I wouldn't, that it was too far. Well it is a long way, of that there is no argument, and for a day trip, simply there and back, I would not have gone. But as part of a weekend away, with hours of birding planned at gems of sites on the east coast, then it becomes a mere detour, and a pleasant one at that.

There were plenty of people stood about "looking", as you would expect. We left them standing on the path and carried on over a bridge and around the north side of the reservoir. Not too much going on, a few Phylloscs to check out, and with cover the south-east Asian rainforests would be proud of, it was very hard work. Fortunately the bird, a Western Bonelli's Warbler in case I had not mentioned it, gave a brief burst of song relatively close to our position which Bradders picked up on straight away, which is why Nick C and I had brought him (and his car). Frustratingly though we could not find it, and during the next three hours it didn't sing again, and one very fleeting view aside, during which I saw parts of the bird in the dense canopy that more or less added up to the whole, we never saw it. I gather it sang again in the afternoon, and showed briefly, but it is a tricky little sod, and on reflection we were pretty lucky to get anything. Another entry for the "bvd" column, extremely irritating as I had been doing very well at erasing them. I could of course just not have ticked it, but after three hours in the car and two hundred miles, that was never really an option was it?

So after three hours of Willow Warblers and Chiffs we gave up, after all there was a master plan to follow. The Bonelli's Warbler was merely the appetiser, the real point of the weekend lay east. So next stop Blacktoft Sands RSPB in East Yorkshire, where the long-staying Marsh Sandpiper showed very well and was a tick for Nick, and only my second. The reserve is fantastic, brilliant water levels, a magnet for waders. A summer-plumaged Blackwit was stunning, and several Greater Yellowlegs Greenshank allowed close scrutiny and a good opportunity for some retrospective self-flagellation. The Spotted Redshank were unfortunately well past their best, but a great supporting cast of Dunlin, Green Sandpipers,Water Rail, Redshank, Lapwing, Yellow Wagtail and Bearded Tit. We came away marvelling at the quality of the habitat management and the potential for birds.

By now mid-afternoon, we pointed the car at Bridlington, our watering hole for the evening. Before we could leave though, it started bonging at us. It was unhappy, it said, about its levels of engine coolant. This did not bode well. We flipped the bonnet, and it was quite right, the coolant reservoir was extremely low, well below the minimum mark. The car instructions were most unhelpful. "Do not drive the car! Take it straight to an approved Subaru dealership! Take it now, I don't care what else you are doing! You will damage the car beyond repair if you touch it! Only add G12abcXYZ mk4 coolant, the mk3 is no good! PS, if you can't get to a dealership, and are not carrying fresh supplies of mk4 G12abcAYZ coolant, top it up with Evian and pretend nothing is wrong". So we did. It stopped bonging and we drove to Bridlington.

 Ah sweet Bridlington, scene of £1.50 a pint lager and a lady with no teeth and an interesting tattoo on our expedition for the Black-throated Thrush last year. That excitement was for later though, for first we were off to Bempton Cliffs RSPB to photograph seabirds in the fantastic evening light. It became clear quite quickly that my tripod and gimbal were going to be mostly useless, and my arms are still aching as I type this, but for an awesome two hours I hand-held my 500mm lens and rattled-off close to a thousand frames as Gannets and Kittiwakes swirled around the cliffs below us. I could have stayed for four hours, perhaps six, but we lost the light and it became quite cold. On a high we packed up and headed for Bridlington, pausing only briefly to hear a lady tell us of the Long-Eared Owls she was hoping to see emerge from their burrows at dusk. I don't think she heard me suggest Rabbit as a confusion species.....

Bridlington did not disappoint. If you have a peculiar fascination with very fat and inappropriately-dressed people, it is THE place to be on a Saturday night. The pub we had visited last time had seen an inflation-busting price-rise to an obscene £1.85 a pint, so we forsook our tatooed friend and instead went to the Wetherspoons, where we were accosted by a young lady as good-looking as she was charming. Thankfully she left, and we were able to enjoy an evening drinking nice beer in peace, and watch Herring Gulls strut down the street looking for drunk people to attack. We ended the day on 90-something species, and made plans to be at Flamborough Head in the morning.





Yes I would

Dear Canon,

Yes, this image was taken hand-held with a shutter speed of only 1/80th of a second. And yes, I was using the amazing Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens, with my trained Grasshopper balancing on one of the fingers of my left hand, and the camera clutched in my right hand. In this most wobby of shaky situations, I felt this would be a proper test of your new hybrid image stabliser, and I am pleased to report that it has done rather well. And yes, if there are any samples of the new Canon 600mm f4.0L IS II lens that need checking out, I would be happy to give it a proper run through its paces for you, on the understanding, naturally, that I get to keep the lens afterwards.

Kind Regards,

Jonathan

Birding Blogs are for Saddos

As is my wont, I was perusing various birdy blogs the other day. I came across one that had no lists, yet the author had just been writing about his new garden list. I'm sorry, but in order to for a blog to be classified as a saddo dweeby birding blog it has to have visible lists of birds. Garden lists, house lists, patch lists, that kind of thing. You will note that my blog has these lists very prominently displayed right at the top, and that I update them assiduously. I would not want my blog to be known as non-nerdy, thank you very much. I pointed out this glaring ommission to the author, and happily he remedied the appaling situation very quickly, and now has a couple of sad bird lists for all to see. With totals - this is important - as nobody cares what you have seen, only how many. So good on him, we would not want anyone thinking that birding can in some way be a normal pastime undertaken by normal people. We must continue to present ourselves as a bunch of pathetic weirdos so that the general public can laugh at us on regional news programs as we queue up to see a bird, all dressed identically. Similarly with blogs, should an unsuspecting member of the non-birding fraternity stumble upon one, he or she must immediately be directed to a list with a number at the bottom of it. They will quickly realise that they would be better off elsewhere, and go and click on a website that shows which crackpot drug-addled musicians died age 27 (and there are lots apparently).

Back to this particular blog I was reading, exciting times are ahead. The author has moved to Grays, and whilst I do not envy him living in Grays, mainly due to the legions of utter morons he will encounter walking their illegal breeds of dog along the seawall, he faces the Thames, and as such has already had such gems as Black Tern from a position of extreme comfort, rather than from a position of extreme wind and rain. Were I him, I doubt I would ever leave the flat, and not just for fear of getting mugged or treading in mountains of dogshit, perhaps simultaeneously. I expect many gripping posts about gratuitous river-watches.

But why, you wonder, would I want to read about what birds some bloke sees out of his window and writes down on a list? It is a good question - well done for posing it - and one I have attempted to answer many times. I'm talking about bird blogs in general now, rather than this one particular blog. This question, even if unanswered, leads to another question, which is why do I write this blog? And why, of course, do people read it (other than to appreciate the magic of blinding prose)? I have an answer, for this would be a pointless post if I didn't.

The answer is that I am performing a vital service to the birding community. By writing, drearily, about exactly the same things that they think about day in, day out, even if they don't write about it, I am normalising their sad hobby. As they read this blog, or indeed the one now being written from Grays, they realise that there are people out there just as pathetic and uncool as they are, and this makes them feel better. For a brief moment, I allow them to experience feeling normal. The effect may even last after turning the computer off, and they can pass an evening thinking happy thoughts, adding numbers up, that sort of thing. As soon as they leave their houses the next day they will of course be shunned, and rightly so for they are a bunch of maladjusted weirdos, but for that short period they can feel happy. Bird-bloggers are basically the Mother Theresas of the birding world. Selfless, thoughtful, in many ways... Saintly.

Sorry, I appear to have wandered off topic. I was intending to write a post about what a fulfilling and complex hobby birding is, how lists are actually cool, how birding blogs are incredibly interesting, and how birders are (by and large) in fact just everyday people. I seem to have strayed slightly, but I'm sure you get the point.

PS If you don't have beard, please consider growing one. I might when I grow up.

More Patch Tales

Like buses, patch yearticks come in twos. Having not seen a new species since May, my cup now truly overfloweth. Common Tern has been frustrating me for a while now. Never particularly straightforward to see, they breed over on the Walthamstow Reservoirs in small numbers, as well as on the Thames at Barking. I don't know where our ones come from, but they never linger for more than about five minutes. You wonder really if it is worth their effort to fly all the way here, catch the tiniest fish ever, and then fly all the way back again.

For the last few days a bird has been seen feeding on the Heronry Pond at 9:10am sharp. At this time I am always on the way back from the school run. I've attempted to connect, but by the time I am at Heronry, the bird has inevitably flown north. Yesterday I decided on a new approach - rather than drive south to Heronry as the bird flies north to the Basin, I just waited at the Basin. Genius, no? And it only went and worked didn't it!! I parked up at the Basin and hopped out of the car. I sauntered confidently over the road and started looking over the fence (it's part of the Golf Course you see, and you must never ever trespass on the Golf Course, that would be totally wrong...). And there it was! One Common Tern, probably the same one that is being seen daily. It hovered, dived, flew round the islands, and then lifted off....south (the little tyke!)....and was joined by a second bird that I hadn't spotted. Cool! Patch yeartick #101. My phone then bonged. It was Tim, stood by the Shoulder of Mutton Pond, and he was looking at one of the Terns, now feeding there. So despite my clever use of tactics and reasoning, I probably could have seen a Common Tern from just about anywhere yesterday, but I am not complaining. Common Tern is definitely getting scarcer. I remember it being regular, and even getting it as a garden tick a few years ago. Then they dried up, and I didn't see one for over two years until 2010. I could list all my sightings if you like...

Patch Tales

Today I did not get up and do the patch. Ever since I the guys got a couple of Green Sandpipers a couple of weeks ago, I have been getting up before 5am and going out to find my own. Guess how much success I've had? Exactly. But I have persevered, day after day, and found nothing better than, er. You know what? I don't recall having found a single interesting bird, it has been quite depressing. In other words, regular patch birding. You go out, you see nothing, you come back, you weep. Well not nothing I suppose, you see the regular denizens, but no surprises, and patch birders like surprises. That's not to say that I have not been pleased with a few things, but whether they constitute exciting is highly debatable. I'll mention two, and let you decide.

The first was when I discovered that unbeknownst to all of us who work the patch, a Tufted Duck had managed to hatch eight ducklings on the Jubilee Pond. At its widest, the Jubilee Pond measures about 25cm, and it plunges to depths of at least 10cm, so Mrs Tuftie is either very very clever, or we're all really really stupid. I've always said the ducks round here are pretty smart. These are either the first or second brood of Tufties we've had, I honestly can't recall, so this is very pleasing, as as recently as yesterday all eight were still present and correct, and had grown substantially.

Secondly, and it doesn't come much more exciting than this, I was wandering across the Flats having checked both Jubilee and Alex for non-existent Green Sandpipers, when I espied a Greylag Goose in a group of Geese on the playing fields. Are you sitting down? I casually raised my bins, and they were all Greylags, sixteen of them! Wow! Added to the family of nine I had just seen on Alex, unless my maths is very shaky, that makes 25 Greylag, easily a new patch record. This is what patch-working is all about.

Yesterday, tramping round the Flats, I saw nothing unusual. I had the place to myself from about 5am. No joggers, no dogs, no dog-walkers, and no doggers. It was very pleasant. Six Greylag flew east at about 5:30am. I had dismissed them as Cormorants moments earlier, as this is exactly what Cormorants do at this time of day. Then one of them honked, exactly like Cormorants don't. Moving on to the Park, I sat on a bench near the Tea Hut, and observed no birds on the Heronry Pond. On the way back home, the Reed Warbler was singing again on the Shoulder of Mutton Pond, raising hopes of a second brood. Later on in the day, back at the Tea Hut, three Sand Martins and two Swift fed above the lake. Everything very much tickety-boo.

This morning I stayed in bed. I deserved it, and was knackered, perhaps still feeling the after-effects of my Cornish extravaganza. I was woken by a tweet at 5:40am, someone thanking me for recently following them. Good. You can guess what is coming. I went back to sleep until 6:15am when another "bong" from my phone woke me up. "Green Sandpiper being flushed by dogs on Alex!" or words to that effect. But of course. I moved very quickly, quickly enough to be at Alex in under five minutes and to just catch not one, but two Green Sandpipers disappearing into the far distance as a large brown dog looked happily on. Luckily one called as it went, the Green Sand equivalent of "Sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm off", and they were never seen again. I checked the Bandstand Pond just in case they had dropped in, but when I got there a small brown and white dog was gambolling in the shallows....

Still, a patch ever tick, and my 100th this year, so I can relax now, and thereby miss more of them. The general rule for seeing waders in Wanstead is to ask yourself if I am in bed or not. If I am, get out there quick is my advice.

A Review of the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro

A bit of a departure today with a review of some photographic kit. I have a bit of a lens fetish, and have recently bought the new Canon 100mm macro. I like it a lot, and wanted to tell people about it. I know, I thought, why not use the blog? There are plenty of birders who read it in the vain hope that one day it might be about birds. Many birders also take photos of birds, and many of them use Canon equipment. In the summer there are no birds to take photos of, and many birders turn their attention to butterflies, dragonflies, and anything else that will alleviate the tedium of June. Although it is July now, it is worryingly similar to June. Do they have a macro lens already? Are they thinking of buying one? Maybe yes, maybe no. Shall I do a review just in case? Ok then, I will. If this is even more boring than normal, I apologise. I will revert to moths and domestic triumphs tomorrow. So off we go then.

Canon 100mm f2.8L IS USM Review

Anyone who has tried Macro Photography knows that it is a right old pain. First you have to find an insect. Then the insect has to stay still, and the wind has to stop moving the grass stem or whatever. That miraculous combination achieved, you crouch down to take a shot. Wide open aperture for a fast shutter speed and a fraction of the insect is in focus. You try again. This time you stop down to increase your depth of field, and oh dear, the shutter speed wasn't fast enough, and your photo is blurry. The solution? A tripod. Yes, a tripod will make getting good images much much easier. Except you won't have any images because you hate going round with your tripod so much that you would rather give up photography altogether. It is a common problem, and one not easily solved. Until now that is.

Canon have released a new Macro lens with an image stabiliser. Many of Canon's lenses have had image stabilisers added for some time, but this is the first time a true Macro lens has been the lucky recipient. Enter the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens. Lying on my sofa, it looks like this:

Although Canon already make a 100mm Macro lens, this one is an entirely new design, rather than the old lens with an image stabliser tacked on. 100mm is probably the most popular macro focal length, being capable of life-size reproduction on the sensor, so it's no surprise that it got the treatment first. Expect the venerable 180mm Macro lens to get a similar update at some point in the future. Like that beast, this one is also an L lens, where "L" stands for luxury. Special glass or something, and a red ring to show off. As with many macro lenses, the old lens was no slouch, so this is merely an opportunity for Canon to up the price tag. That said, you get a lot of lens for your money.

When you first pick it up, it has to be said it feels a little plasticky. This is good plastic though, and while I am loathe to test it this early on, I bet it can stand up to some fair old abuse. And the good thing about plastic is that it weighs less than metal, and so even with the addition of an image stabiliser and a load of pixies to operate it, this lens weighs in at a mere 625g. This is a fraction more than the older 100mm macro, and if you are used to toting a birding lens like the Canon 300mm f4 IS around, or the 100-400mm zoom, this will seem like a toy in comparison. Plastic or not, construction appears to be extremely solid, exactly what you would expect from an L lens. It is weather sealed with a rubber O ring around the lens mount, and weather sealing is completed by screwing in a 67mm filter at the other end. If you want to take advantage of this, do not under any circumstances buy a cheapo five quid filter from Hong Kong off Ebay. You might as well rub water-repelling grease on the front element for all the good it will do your pictures. Buy a really expensive filter from a reputable dealer. You will only buy it once, and you will not notice it is there. Personally I use a B+W UV Haze 010 MRC filter, which in the 67mm variety costs about fifty quid, but there are other equally good ones out there. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

The lens comes with a deep hood which is excellent, and that I recommend you use all the time (apart from in some circumstances of course, which I'll come to later. Obtuse? Moi?). Using the hood makes removing and fitting the lens cap a pain, but you will be pleased when you bash the lens hood and not your expensive filter. What do you mean you didn't buy a filter?! The lens also comes with a useless grey bag which Canon will try and tell you is a lens case. Throw it away immediately.

The lens's minimum focussing distance is 30cm. Those 30cms are measured from the film plane, or whatever the digital equivalent is. The sensor probably. The lens is about 12cm long, so this means that it can still focus when your front element is about 15cm from the subject. This means that you will sometimes want to remove the lens hood, as it is 8cm long. Insects get scared when large black things approach them. With the hood in place, the large scary black thing approaches to within 7cm. Gah!! If you're working tight, the hood can also bump into close branches and stems, the movement of which will cause the insect to scarper. With the hood off, you can stay that bit further away, but of course you have exposed your front element to the elements. Hope you bought a filter.

The focussing ring is wide and smooth, and with a USM motor, full-time manual focussing is available, extremely useful for macro. The lens does not change length when focussing, it all happens inside. The lens takes an optional tripod collar, sold by Canon for an additional two trillion pounds. The whole point of this review is that you can use this lens without needing a tripod, so don't buy it. On the side of the lens are three recessed switches. AF on or off, a focus limiter, and a switch to have IS on or off. I don't think I have moved them since I got the lens, and my settings are AF on, IS on, and the full focal range. But it's nice to know that they are there if you need them. Why the hell would you turn the IS off though? It's the only real reason for buying the new lens over the old one, and why you're paying a premium of 70%.

IS is great. I mean really great. Canon's latest inception of IS is worth 4 stops of light. That means that in the normal course of taking photographs, you can use a shutter speed a full sixteen times slower than you might otherwise without the benefit of IS. I think that's right, but you might want to go and check. Whichever, it's a lot. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Wow. For the uninitiated, an F stop is either the halving or doubling of light hitting the sensor. One stop down is the halving, one stop up, the doubling. Two stops and you halve it again. A quarter the light. Three, and it's an eighth. And so on. In practical terms, an exposure of 1/1600s at f2.8 on a lens with no image stabliser can be reproduced at 1/100s at f16 with no apparent camera shake on a lens with a four stop image stabiliser. In macro photography, stopping down to increase your depth of field is pretty important. Very important in fact. But without IS, you get shutter speeds so slow you cannot possibly hand-hold the camera and take a sharp photograph. So you need a tripod to keep the camera steady. By the time you have set up your tripod, the insect has probably moved off or been eaten. With the new IS lens, this isn't a problem any more. You can leave your pain-in-the-ass tripod at home and have a much better time out and about.

With IS on. 1/640s @ f7.1, Evaluative metering -1/3rd.



With IS off. Please note that I may have faked this test.



The IS system in this new lens is a little bit different. Canon calls it hybrid IS. This combines correction not only for normal angular movement like all previous IS systems -  ie you wobbling the camera up and down a bit - but also side to side movement which can be extremely noticeable when you are close to your subject. Little tiny pixies inside the lens detect which way you're wobbling, and move the lens elements the other way so that the wobble, or most of it at least, is eliminated. When you engage focus, you can actually hear the pixies, they kind of hum. Move the lens a bit more rapidly, and they begin to whine. No really. Does it work? Yes it does. You actually see the image in the viewfinder steady and then become still. Of course there is a limit to what you can get away with, but it is pretty miraculous. Canon say that at 1:1 Macro distances the hybrid IS system only gives you two stops of correction. I'll take those two stops. I have no way of testing it, and it's far too boring anyway, but my at my personal level of shakiness, I can take a sharp handheld macro pic at 1/15th of a second with this lens. They're not all sharp at this speed, and of course IS has absolutely no bearing on subject movement which is often the real killer, but being able to rely on this very slow shutter speed with a still subject pleases me a great deal, and it will please you too. Please note that all people wobble differently. You may wobble more than me, or you may wobble less than me. I have no way of knowing. Anyway, a macro lens with IS means you can simply wander around and expect to take decent hand-held photos of insects with no messing about. For a birder on the move, this is brilliant.

1/200s @ f10, evaulative metering -1/3rd.

Anything else you need to know? Well yes actually. The lens is sharp even at f2.8. Normally, lenses reach optimum sharpness when you stop down the aperture a bit. Not so with this one, and it is sharp all the way to the corners. I actually tested this, but the resulting test shots don't fall into the "interesting" category. And anyway, mostly it doesn't matter, the centre of the lens is largely what is important in a macro lens. Colours are vibrant and contrasty, just as you would expect from an L lens, and the out-of-focus blur at f2.8 is excellent. Focussing is quick, and accurate. Moving from minimum to maximum is really really fast, not something I was expecting at all. This makes the lens much more versatile. Imagine, there you are taking photos of a small bug. All of a sudden your mate ten metres away pulls a funny face. You quickly recompose, the lens snaps into focus on his mug, IS means the resulting image is sharp, and you have some excellent blog material. You couldn't do that with many macro lenses. 100mm is an excellent portrait length, which is another use for this lens. I use it on my kids all the time.

So there you are, it ain't just birds. A tedious review of the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens. The quality is assured, so the question most people will ask is is it worth the price premium over the older lens, which takes excellent photos, and can be snapped up for around £300 on the second-hand market? Well, I can only speak for me, but the IS system, even if the hybrid thingy is less effective at macro distances, means I can use this without a tripod almost all of the time. If I'm out birding, I just bung it in my pocket and off I go. Brilliant. So that is extra cash that I am willing, if not wildly happy, to pay. Its versatility means it sits on my camera a large percentage of the time.

Vital statistics
Focal Length: 100mm
Aperture: f2.8 to f32
Minimum focussing distance: 30cm
Minimum working distance: 15cm
Weight: 625g
Length: 12.3cm
Width: 7.7cm
Filter thread: 67mm
Cost: £725 new, s/h £600ish if you can find one. I did.