Wildlife Photography across the Water: New Gear Arrived

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

New Gear Arrived

With Dave on his travels, it looks like you are going to have to put up with a few more blogs from me until he gets to some internet access.

In my recent posts, I have shared a few thoughts that I have been mulling over with my current gear set up.

With the 1Dmk3 now in a new home in Scotland, my old 5D with a new keeper and Jac's 7D not too long left on eBay, we are down to just my 7D.

As regular readers know, I have really loved the 7D and happy to keep that for some of my imagery. However, you will also know that I acquired an 'old' 5D last year and it was delightful to reacquaint myself back with full frame after a couple years away from it.

Having checked out the sort of prices I was likely to get for the sale of all of the bespoke Canon kit and doing an almost like for like replacement with Nikon, I was going to be in the region of 5 to 6K light on the deal. Although to be fair, there would have been a couple of lenses in there that weren't exactly truly comparable.

So as a short term option, for the time being, I took delivery of a couple of parcels today.

There are a good few reasons why I have taken this route other than the above,

The 5Dmk2 set up is VERY similar to the 7D in terms of menu options, and in particular the C1 to C3 options that I use extensively on the 7D as I have described here.

Live view gets a lot of use with my close up and macro work, and I missed that going back to the 5D.

High ISO capabilities with this camera, and big PIXELS.

I was finding that the 7D was taxing my Cf card capacity, so I will probably get myself a couple of 8Gig Sandisk 111 cards in the next few days, as it is likely that this will tax that card capacity even more.

So I am not going to do loads of my versions of reviews on this camera in the next few weeks. It has been around a long time now - another reason for getting it now.

If you want lots of 5Dmk2 information, check out this site - there is a mass on here with all the links you could wish for, particularly on video capabilities.

Canon gave a final sting in the tail with their pricing - they just banged up the prices across the board by another few percent as Dave reported last month. About £30 in the case of this body. Most dealers were just passing these on - I just got away with it.

Amazon were the cheapest for the BGE-6 so they got my custom this time round.

So there we go, I wont bore you with my decisions/indecisions any more..................at least for the time being.

Martin

PS. I sold my 5D to a work colleague who was delighted with the difference over his 50D 1.6 cropper. Sadly, the mirror fell off on his second shoot with it. This is a well known problem, although it never happened to me on either on the 5D's I owned. The good news is that it is a free fix and return by Canon.

1 comment:

Martyn9 February 2011 at 21:14
Good luck Martin, look forward to more shots, and your impressions of the Mk2 over the Mk1.

Martyn
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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.