Pasties, passerines and pixels

To begin ...

This blog is going to be about the three enthusiasms that are keeping me amused in old age: exploring the spectacular coast of Devon and Cornwall (often with the aid of pasties), looking at lovely birds (often passerines – little birds capable of perching on branches) and capturing both in pixel form. And the greatest of these is pixels – that is, photography.

These days I shoot with a Fujifilm crop-sensor camera. I'm new to these cameras, and I'm finding mine even more complicated in some ways than the top-notch full-frame Sony kit that I am moving away from. So I am making notes on my Fuji X-H2 camera, which may eventually find their way into a commercial publication. Meanwhile, I'll be sharing some discoveries here.

Why am I switching? The answer, intelligible only to fellow photographers: a killer combination of a sharp but not-too-heavy 600mm zoom lens (giving a 'reach' in full-frame terms of 900mm) and cameras with 40Mp APS-C sensors. I do like large numbers of pixels – and some pixel-related posts will follow.

The photo I'm posting, taken over Easter weekend on my first outing with the 'new' (actually bought used) kit, is emphatically not of a passerine:it's of a Grey Heron at Exminster Marshes, near the Exe estuary in Devon.

Now, I'm off to shoot some more birds, possibly including passerines.