Bird photos with new lens

My new toys arrived today! As soon as I got home from work I opened up the boxes containing my new 70-200mm lens and the 1.4x extender and slapped them on my camera. Well, first I attached the UV filter to protect my nice new lens. I attached the lens hood, took a quick peek at the owners manual to see which Image Stabilization setting to use, and headed out onto the deck. My yard is home to a lot of birds and this young fellow came right out to see why my cats seemed to think the deck belonged to them (I think maybe he’s not too smart yet)!

A bit farther away, the rest of his family gathered to call out warnings and insults to me and the cats. I don’t even know what kind of birds these are. I much prefer my house finches and mourning doves. Anyway, they provided a nice little test handholding my new lens to see how the IS works.

It's Here! It's Here!

My new version of Adobe Photoshop has arrived! Yes, I know that Photoshop CS4 is out now and this is only CS3, but at half the price or less it will do the trick for me.

Ok, here's the story. In December I bought myself a Christmas present - a brand new Canon 50D camera body to replace my 20D. Oh, happy me! I quickly shot a few test images and raced to my computer to see how they looked. The anticipation turned to dismay when I realized that CS2 does not recognize the new RAW format! To make matters worse, my computer failed to install the Canon software that would provide a workaround. I certainly hadn't planned on spending hundreds of dollars more on a new version of Photoshop, so CS3 is my compromise. It still wasn't cheap, but I'm told it will read my 50D images with the correct download. I have to wait until Saturday to install it and my biggest fear is that something will go wrong. After all, the Canon software wouldn't install, so maybe it's a problem with my machine. I'll just cross my fingers and keep you posted!