I was replying to SteveNunez's "Osprey Again" thread, envying his weather, when my wife shouted, "There is a female cardinal at our bird feeder"; this was the opportunity I'd been waiting for, so I dashed into the living room with my Q7 (I already had my legacy 75mm-205mm K-mount lens mounted on it via a Fotodiox adapter). There are some things I haven't done yet; I haven't bought a walking-stick/monopod to provide stability, so this was entirely hand-held; I haven't bought a hood/magnifier so I can see well enough to focus well. I haven't decided whether my sharpest legacy lens is this one or the FD-mount 70mm-210mm f/4.5 that my mother left behind when she moved to a retirement center. But I thought it was worth a try.
The lens was zoomed to about 170mm, which gives a view equivalent to about 800mm on a 35mm camera. This picture was taken at ISO=1600; even then, with the maximum f-stop f/3.5 of that lens, the shutter speed was just 1/125 (manually set to a speed higher than what the camera had chosen under Av mode), so the SR was working overtime. Snow was falling, I was shooting through two layers of glass, and the EXIF data shows that the picture was taken at 5:25 (Weather Channel says sunset, if we could see the sun, was at 5:28).
Obviously, I need to improve my technique; manual focusing will be a challenge even when I'm able to provide more stability for the camera. I'll need to decide which zoom lens to use. But even this baby step is ahead of where I've been in photographing wildlife. My wife is a bird-watcher (which is why I'm not planning on using a tripod - most of her "watching" consists of wandering down meandering paths), and this is the best I've done. This is one of the major reasons I bought the Q7, instead of getting a camera with a larger sensor. Hopefully I can provide better pictures in the future.