The first free weekend saw me out and about at one of my regular spots on the Somerset Levels with my new camera. I had literally just finished setting up when out popped this beautiful fox. No more than 50 yards away, it walked quite unconcerned straight past me and the wife. 

One or 2 quick bursts on the camera and I had about 30 or 40 shots in the bag. Amazing I thought. And then I realised that I had left the ISO setting at 800 the previous night when playing with/learning the camera's controls. 

Aaaargh!!!!

I couldn't leave it at that so I returned the next day to see what was about. I was lucky enough to find the fox with what appeared to be a mate sunning themselves in a field some 300 yards from my position. After a couple of hours and a bit of manoeuvring I got close enough for several more decent shots. This time all taken at a more reasonable ISO 250. When I got home and processed the weekend's results I couldn't believe how good the ISO 800 shots were. In fact I could barely (if at all) tell them apart from the ISO 250 shots. I made A3 prints of the 2 photos you see here and showed both to a professional wildlife photographer whose opinion and skill I rate. Suffice it to say he thought both images looked very close in terms of quality but that he could tell which was shot at ISO 800. He then promptly pointed to the WRONG!! image.

Fox (male?). Canon 1D Mark II. 500mm F4 L IS USM plus 1.4x Converter. 1/1000 sec at f8. ISO 250

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