Last weekend we had a ‘weekend with friends’. As we have done often, we rented two cottages and enjoyed some relaxed days with food, wine, talks, swims and some easy walks. Since we were in a heavily forested area, there was not enough light to do real bird-shooting, but still I took my camera with me and could take some pictures of a Coal Tit (Zwarte Mees), a species not that easy to find in the area were we live. Also I framed a Common Chaffinch (Vink) that was shaking it’s feathers. The low shutter speed made for a milky movemennt of the feathers.. Sunday morning we visited one of the former royal palaces, “Paleis het Loo” , where we could get a glimpse of the grandeur of the past. The rooms proved to be very dark, so an ideal opportunity to test my camera with high ISO’s. By the way, the image above has been shot at ISO3600… so the lack of light was not only indoors… All in all a dark, but very pleasant weekend !