Camera: Sony A100
Lens: Minolta 100-300 APO and a 2x Quantaray teleconverter
Photos marked as 300mm are without the teleconverter, while those listed as 600mm are with the teleconverter.
Note the 100% crop in the corner -- there is a noticeable loss of resolution when using the teleconverter. Also, I got "purple fringe" on many highlights which I didn't get in the non-teleconverter photos. All teleconverter shots were manually focused (autofocus does not work with the reduced light). Using the teleconverter is a mixed bag -- difficult to use and a lower resolution. It's hard to say if it is worth the tradeoffs for the increase in magnification
This year, I had a lot of problems with motion blur. Now, while I'm sure that my panning skills are not perfect, I had left SSS (Super Steady Shot) on all the time. In retrospect, I should have tried with it off, even though it is said that SSS works with panning.
Below, I used UFRAW to convert the photos. The colors seem a bit more "honest" than what came out of the other RAW file converter that I used above.
