Review of the Year Part 11 - November

Full archive for November can be found here covering all 36 posts but some of my favourites were as follows.

Dave started the month off Bob Dylan style - well almost and then went off to see the New York skyline, before getting lost in technology, at least a  couple of times.

I started my BTO winter counts for a couple of tetrads that I am monitoring as part of the Bird Atlas 2007-2011 work, and then went off to find some local fungi with these two reports.

I also got some hands on time with the Canon 7D and reviewed back to back with the 1Dmk111 on an ISO test

This post and the one I did in December on AF testing have seen a huge number of views, so clearly it is something that some of you are interested in.

I was very cynical about the Canon marketing speak, based on my own experiences of ownership of the 1Dmk111 and use of the 50D, when comparing to the claims made for them.  I said I would let the testing tell the story for the 7D and remain sceptical until I had hands on time.  Well it is good, and a significant upgrade over the 40D, and a more massive leap compared to the 50D for image quality/ISO noise.

Dave picked up on AF systems here, and I will cover it a bit more in the review for December.

Anyway, there were lots of other good posts as well as these, so check them out.

Stat porn for November

2606 page visits from 578 unique visitors from 43 countries

Martin

Review of the Year Part 10 - October

So into the final quarter of the year.

The Autumn was very dry in the UK and so it was barren for fungi until November, or at least it was around here in Warwickshire.

In terms of blogs for the month, we made 38 posts for the month.

I had a go at Bats in flight and Dave melted his flash head.

Canon announced the 1Dmk4, which still hasn't made it into the shops here in the UK in any numbers, and Nikon announced the D3S.

Dave took a trip to the Smokey Mountains plus here, here and here and to New York for a few of days.

I got all philosophical about unpaid beta testing for manufacturers and we shared a few news stories with you from the world of wildlife and here too.

Stat porn for October  2,418 page views from 561 unique visitors from 38 countries.

Two more to go

Martin

Another Thrush in the Garden

One of the winter ones - a Fieldfare today - not the best of shots as it is in the very cluttered apple tree - but first chance to get an image of one in the garden. 

Martin

Time to keep warm

I have been an outdoors man for as many years as i care to remember, As a kid i was a keen fisherman and this went on through my youth-until i was 30, I fished for specimen carp,pike,barbel and chub as well as other species and at one point i held the largest fully scaled carp in the UK, Fishing year in and year out through all weathers taught me one thing-If you are not comfortable then you are not enjoying yourself and you may as well go home, For most of us photography is for enjoyment and i for one love to shoot in cold conditions, The light is sweeter,especially when there is snow about, but to be outside in minus temperatures for long periods of time means that you need to dress accordingly, Dress in layers and dress in quality clothing, This is no time to skimp on costs, The chink in my armour for a while has been decent boots, i have survived for years on skeetex boots and these have done me proud but all good things come to an end and now is the time to invest in a good replacement, I thought of getting some sorrel boots as these have been highly rated for years, But after looking around i went to Cabelas and bought some of their extreme weather pac boots, these arrived when i was at the Outer Banks and i have yet to put them through their paces, my friends leave on Monday and i expect to be out early tuesday, the weather in NC like most of the USA is going through a cold spell and this will be a good test until i get up to New Jersey in a week or so, First impression of the boots is of quality, they are a large boot mainly through padding and insulation,They are rated at -150 so should be good for anything the weather throws at me here,Europe,Japan etc, They seem comfortable and have a replacable inner boot which is a nice touch, Cabelas has a sale on at present and these boots are around $120 which is a bargain, I went for the camo version but other styles are available-More details here ,so dress accordingly and stay safe

Dave

Review of the Year Part 9 - September

In Part 9 of this series we revisit the September archives.

Canon launched the 7D and I had a view as did Dave and by the end of the month it was shipping, so no hanging around there.

I did a two part article on 'What type of photographer are you?' plus part 2 here.

Dave went photographing Kingfishers and some interesting other things on his local patch and I found some more new species in my garden and more here.

Dave also had a neat little sideline here as he turned model and I went off to find some moths in Worcestershire.

HDR software was covered here and I shared how I keep in touch with the web while mobile.

Stat porn for September  2,967 page views from  693 unique visitors from 48 countries.

Martin

The Outer Banks PT2

Well a very Happy New Year to all our readers, I am now back at home after a whistle stop tour of the Outer Banks with my Brit friends, All in all i managed about 2 hrs of serious photography and an hour of that was spent searching the area, My best shots came with my wifes compact camera, Its very handy to have a small camera around for those times that you least expect, On the first evening of arriving there we were going out for a meal and i noticed that there would be a nice sunset so we nipped down a small lane and found a jetty and a couple of palm trees, I let the camera do what it wanted as it was just a point and shoot and the results were pretty good, The second evening we spent driving around the area where i normally see bear but they just werent around but we did see a distant Red Wolf-one of the rarest animals in the world, We viewed it through the binoculars as it headed across a field into the distance-Fantastic,Yesterday i awoke to heavy rain and fog so we headed back once again checking the bear area but we found hunters walking through the crops-i dont know what they were after as there are signs saying its a no hunting zone but it explained why there were no bears to be seen, There were definantly bears in the area by the poo on the roads but i guess they only moved at night, The last of the Xmas pressies arrived whilst we were away and i will tell you about those next time

Dave

Song Thrush in the frost - 1st image of the year

Just a quick image from a couple of hours in the hide in the garden this morning.  This was the only non-Blackbird image I got today. 

Light just coming up with plenty of hard frost

Martin

Review of the Year Part 8 - August

So as we welcome in the New Year and a new decade, I will carry on with our year review and so into August we go.

We did a couple of posts on back button focussing here and here - this is a technique that I have been using for a number of years now and immediately set any camera that I use to this setting.  It is a great feature for wildlife photographers.

My garden was a source of many images for me this year and a couple of the posts covered this here and here.

Dave did a bit on the Sigma 180 macro lens here and showed how images look when using different perspectives.

We had two guest photographers in August, Tony Wharton and Mike Lane, who shared a number of images with us.

I did a bit on wildlife introduction philosophy here, which I had hoped would spark some more comments and interaction, but sadly we only received one comment - Thanks Peter.

Dave shared with us his close encounter with death as he came up face to face and close with Black Widow spiders.

Stat porn for August,  3,400 page vists, 830 unique visitors  from 50 countries.

Martin