Vane farm photography course

A hoverfly on a holly leaf, originally uploaded by chored.

Just spent the day at a one day Beginner's photography course at Vane Farm near Kinross in Fife. A lot of basic theory was covered which I was pretty much aware of, but where it was really interesting was hearing a professional photographer's hints on how to get great shots (in this case specifically wildlife shots).

We had the opportunity to go and take some photos, there wasn't a huge amount of birds to be seen, but we did get a few good shots and we were forced to shoot entirely manual, so it was good experience of getting to use my camera properly.

Overall, at £30 for the day, it's well worth doing if you are a beginning photographer, although for those well versed in basic theory, it's perhaps less useful.

I did realise how great my A700 is, in the morning session I had the A700 with our Tamron 55-200 and was able to get a range of good shots, some of which are impressively sharp (well at least to my eye). In the afternoon, Rosie had the A700, so I had the A350 with the 18-70mm kit lens and I just didn't get any good shots. Not enough reach for the smaller wildlife and not enough sun for the landscapes and every photo I took was a little soft.

The strange thing is in the past 6 months we've had the Tamron, I've found the kit lens on the A350 to be a much more practical walk about lens, so I don't know if it's just that wildlife photography is a different application to what I'm used to, or if the A700 with the Tamron produces so much better photos that the A350 with the kit looks a bit rubbish in comparison.

Oh well, at least it's a justification for buying the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 I quite fancy.