Of cameras and birds.

This post is about two things - the camera and the birds.
First the camera. As I said on this blog last year I bought a new camera - a Pentax K200. Previously I had been using a Canon S2 and the Pentax was so much better that I only had to use presets. I am totally fascinated by birds - not cameras! - so why bother to learn more about the camera settings if automatic settings were already taking much better photos than I had taken before. Since then I have gradually started modifying some of the presets and even discarding them as inadequate in a few cases. However, over the last month or so it has been extremely frustrating to learn the inadequacies of the lens - a Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 DG Macro. Don't misunderstand - this is an excellent lens considering what I paid for it! BUT --
Now for the birds! Back in June I went for a walk in the rainforest and saw some very tiny birds on the ground hunting around among the fallen leaves. They were small - at a distance I didn't even see them as birds but as creatures not much bigger than a mouse! (I still have a lot to learn about bush birds!) I saw a similar bird out at Inskip hunting around in the leaf litter and got some very dark photos - but enough to get an ID of a White-browed Scrub Wren. So now I knew what they were and where to find them. Then the frustration with the camera really began. I could not get more than a blurred photo of the bird! I really should have spent more time learning about the camera and how to make use of all the settings but I guess it's been better late than never! Yesterday I finally did enough things right to get some OK photos. Not great photos, I know, and I know what to do better next time I see these little fellows scratching around in the leaf litter. Of course, I do wish they would sit still and not decide to suddenly hop up into a really dense shrub. In case I don't see these little birds again for a while (after all I'd rather be out on the kayak!) here are yesterday's photos!