Photos of Your Hobby Part-II — CFFC

Oh Wow!!! We’re doing this again? I guess it comes at an opportune moment as I only last week bit the bullet and bought a new lens. This is a Fujifilm XF 100-400mm zoom which will give the equivalent of a 150-600mm in full frame terms. That’s 12 times magnification at full extension! Its uses are obvious – Sports and Nature although I can think of some train locations where the extra reach could produce some good shots.

The first thing was to test the lens and that’s not too hard given that we have a continuous flow of aircraft over our back garden. Here’s an American Airlines Boeing 777 (N753AN) making its way into Heathrow from Dallas Fort Worth…

…That was an un-cropped shot with the Fuji X-H2s. Here’s another that did get a bit of cropping, The Plod – G-MPSA, a Eurocopter EC-145 – Heading west to presumably assist with tracking some criminal elements…

…Or maybe they’ve heard that the kettle’s on at Elstree 😅 This aircraft was patrolling the fence line at Stansted airport yesterday evening when Air Force One arrived.

And so to last Saturday and a stinging defeat in the FA Cup against full-time pro’s Dorking Wanderers. The new lens produced some great shots. In this one the guys defend a set piece…

…And in this, Ryan lofts an accurate forward pass…

…And finally, Dorking’s players have to do some defending of their own…

A very pleasing debut for the new lens 👍 The one downside is that I won’t be able to use it for night games – our floodlights aren’t that good 😒

Back to other photo subjects and a bit of street photography. This stall on Earlham Street was selling cheap items of jewellery…

…A contre-jour shot with the Fuji X-Pro2 which accompanied us on our own ring-finding expedition. It also captured this Metroline bus operating the 46 route in Holborn…

And so to the trains. A trip to Carshalton at the end of last month allowed me to capture this symphony of green and yellow – 377605 arriving on a Horsham to Victoria service…

…While earlier that week I targeted another of the final journeys for the Class 455’s. Once more 37800 ‘Cassiopeia’ provided the power and is seen passing through Shepherds Bush with 5903 and 5741…

A pleasant surprise later in the day was Tug – Class 60 – 60096 ‘Skiddaw’ caught climbing up to West Hampstead with an Angerstein Wharf to Purfleet aggregates train…

Lets finish with a couple of archive train images. Here’s a Rat – Class 25 – 25189 at Warrington Bank Quay back in 1981…

…And a Whistler – Class 40 – 40070 at Skipton in 1979…

Someone once quipped “The sun always shone on the old railways…” I can’t claim to believe that for one minute, having spent plenty of damp days under platform awnings, but it certainly put in an effort for those shots 😅

That’s photos from my main transport and football hobbies with a street photo thrown in. You can catch up with other entries for the challenge on Dan’s website, here.