The start of the birding season at the Neusiedlersee NP. I have to say that it was very hard for me to wait till end of march. Winter comes late this year but stayed there till mid of march. Tired of all the snow and cold weather ( I can´t believe that I said that ( usually I really love snow and the cold winter days )) I simply had enough of shooting birds at the feeder and snow covered landscapes. I shot a lot of portraits instead and waited for the first birds to arrive at the Neusiedlersee.

While I visited the lake twotimes at the Easter weekend I missed the best morning regarding light. On friday I went out of the office and drove to the lake trough all the traffic jams caused by the Easter traffic. It took me approx. 2 hours to escape from the city and get there ( usually it takes me an hour ). And on Easter sunday I stood up at 6 o´clock in the morning to catch the morning sun at the lake just to find the whole place in deep fog. Even than I managed to get some great and very mystic shots.

This one was taken on the slightly overcasted Friday afternoon. I borrowed a TC-17E II from a close friend to give it a try and I have to say that I´m impressed. I used the combo at f5.6 because I prefer to set "full"-f-stops. The sharpness of this combo really amazed me. I used a TC20 but was never happy with the results. The TC-14E is superb but a little short - but the TC-17EII is just right. It´s close to the reach of the TC-20E but regarding image quality it´s as good as the TC-14E. But instead of writing another praise I let you have a look at a 100% crop of the above image. I think this image tells you more than a thousand words. Btw the crop is not sharpened. I think that I haven´t to say that I ordered one right after the weekend.

settings: A-Mode, 1/500@f5.6, -0.7exp., 400 ASA, WB: cloudy -3 but corrected to sunny in Capture, lens on beanbag