Biblical sky

As I wrote this time three years ago, this is the time of the Ice Saints. On cue, they came; St Pancras and Servatus, and with them unseasonably cold weather crashing in after a hot start to spring. On Friday, it was 30C, yesterday 12C, today the thermometer was showing 9C. Cold rain lashed down on Warsaw.

But by this evening, sunshine began penetrating the leaden skies. Eddie observed from the kitchen rain falling through the lowering rays - ideal conditions, I noted, for a rainbow to appear (as it usually does) to the south-east. And a chance to try the new 10-24mm lens. Now, my old lenses (18-200mm, 18-55mm) both start at 18mm (equivalent to 27mm on a full-size sensor or 35mm film camera) - are not wide enough to capture a full rainbow end to end. In the past, I've had to stitch together two photos to form a panorama - not an easy task.

Well, as you can see, the rainbow's there, made the more visible by using a polarising filter (makes a big difference, which you can see by rotating it). Sadly, the rainbow was not full - the rain was only falling on the right side of the frame. Traces of a secondary rainbow can just be seen to the upper right of the main one. The lens is set to 14mm, so 10mm is totally ample to catch a full rainbow (125th sec, f5.6, 160 ISO).