Sunrise at Portland Bill

As I mentioned here, just after the wedding Jac and I spent a bit of time on Dorset and one of the great pleasures of the trip was seeing the sun come up over the English Channel from Portland Bill.

It was a good forty five minutes before the sun came up that we found ourselves parked up at a chilly exposed car park, with just the rays of light from the lighthouse playing out across the sea.

Finding a suitable spot looking towards where the sun was due to rise, I set up the 5Dmk2, 24-70 on the tripod with the Lee Filter system, mostly using my favourite Blending Filter.  This is a specially made ND grad that transitions from 3 stops at the top through to nothing at the bottom in one big graduation.  I like this filter as it avoids the obvious step in exposure that you get with standard ND grads.

Well before the sun was up the light was cold and blue

As the sun came up the light transitioned through these glorious stages

They have all had a little amount of Photoshop fannying about for artistic effect.....obviously.

With the waves crashing in the rocks and the wind blowing straight at me, I kept the lens covered with a Lee Filter lens cloth in between shots, and generally had to wipe the filter clean in between alternate shots

Turning round directly behind me in the same place was the lighthouse.

Using just a standard exposure resulted in this shot.

Quite pleasant, but nothing really special.

Putting on the B & W 10 ND screw on filter that I blogged about last year, and then fitting the Lee Blender on top gave me these images

A completely different effect.  As I mentioned before, one of the compromises with the 10 x Screw in filter is you have to do all your composition and set up and lock the camera off before you fit the filter and Lee system.  And before that you have to do the exposure calculation.  I usually do a meter reading, and then using fingers and thumbs keep doubling the shutter speeds until I get to what I think is about the right answer.  It doesn't always work out right, but then you can experiment extending or reducing based on your results.

This was the first time that I had used the 5Dmk2 for landscapes and I have to say I am very impressed with it.  Lovely smooth files, which the size and resolution on here will never do great justice to

Martin

Frog Blog'11 - Part 5 - All croaked out

Activity of spawning continues in the pond as I type this on Tuesday night, but it has tailed off now.  There are still about ten pairs at it, and there are now over thirty clumps of spawn.  I guess it really will be a bumper year.

Checking out the pond last night with the torch, the Smooth Newts are very active now, and I will be checking out for their eggs very soon, now I know where and how to look for them, having done an Amphibian Surveying Course last weekend with the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust

Here are a quick couple of images that I took with the new 5Dmk2 and Canon 180 f3.5L - a really stunning combination of quality and sharpness.  I am really looking forward to this years 'close up' season.

You can see the fruits of his labours just in front of him just under the water surface

Martin

Bewick Swans - Slimbridge Trip Part 3

When I made the first of my two recent trips to Slimbridge, I took a few shots with the Canon 5Dmk2 to see how it performed.  You will remember I did a small bit on this blogpost with a lovely Buzzard.

I also had a go with the 5D, the 500 +  1.4 with some in-flight subjects to see how it performed.  Other than a much slower frame rate, at 3.9fps v 8 for the 7D, no significant differences.  Yes there are much fewer AF points, but for in flight subjects and the way I set up the active points this was no worries.

Now why do I mention this?  Well because photographers who follow the benefits of this body over that body do it from studying specifications on paper rather than using the camera they have....or in many cases don't have before offering all sorts of wisdom based on their 'knowledge'

There is only one forum that I actively tend to contribute these days.  Well there have been quite a few threads on why the 7D should be chosen over the 5D or this body over that body.  One of the most common bit of advice dispensed is the faster frame rate and the faster AF blah blah blah.

Well the 5Dmk2 is just fine in both areas.  No there aren't as many points and it is a not as technically well appointed.  BUT you can get fine sharp photos with it, and it works pretty well when you have low contrast subjects against their backgrounds.

Here are few images that I took at Slimbridge with the 5D on some wonderful Bewick Swans,

Nothing special image wise, but demonstrates the ability of the camera

Martin

Canon 7D v 5Dmk2 - a bit of pixel peeping

Just over a week ago while I was at Slimbridge I was in one of the hides on my own and so was lucky enough to have the beautiful Common Buzzard that is the subject of today's blog all to myself, in beautiful sunlight.

It hung around for quite a while as it was intently study a vole in the field ahead of it, which it subsequently caught and flew off with.  This gave me the chance to change around body, lens and converter compositions to see how things looked and how the crop worked.

The first two images are full frame in terms of crop, and then I will do some 100% pixel blow ups.  (Click on the image to see it larger)

5Dmk2, 500f4, 1.4EFTC, 100% of the image

7D, 500f4 (no TC) 100% of the image

Summary - the 1.4 on the 5D nearly makes up for the 1.6 crop factor on the 7D.  Both images are within 1 kelvin on the colour temperature, but the 7D is warmer due to it being shot about 20 minutes earlier, and the sun was brighter.

5Dmk2, 500f4, plus 1.4EFTC, crop at 100% pixel enlargement - Unsharpened!!

7D, 500f4, crop at 100% pixel enlargement - Unsharpened as well!!

 I am pretty happy with this as neither has been sharpened.  The 5D was at ISO400 and the 7D at 125 (for some reason! - should have been at 100 as I only usually use whole stops, but maybe should have it at 400 for a truer comparison)

5D, 500 + 1.4  - cropped for presentation and sharpened

7D 500, cropped for presentation and sharpened as a direct comparison with the the previous one.

As can be seen from the first two images as the full originals, to get to a useable crop there has been pretty big crops.

Now if we put the 1.4 EFTC on the 500 and 7D, then the subject is much better sized in the frame (obviously) but does mean a lot less pixels are thrown away in the resizing process.

7D, 500f4, 1.4 EFTC, 100% of the image, no crop

And given that the light was good I also added the 2x EFTC, and again at full size, we now have an image that we need to throw away virtually nothing and retain all of the available quality.  Now of course the 2x does compromise IQ  and there are some losses but as we have said before on here, if you have great light, a good steady solid platform and stop down to at least f11 or thereabouts, you can get some good results with it.   In  Live view mode, I also found that the AF still worked with the 7D, and it shouldn't if you read the specs, unless somebody knows otherwise.

Landscape and portrait variants with the 7D, 2 x EFTC and 500 - both full frame

So conclusions!!.  Apart from the ability to pick and choose your reach by virtue of crop, factor, lens length and converter size, I am not particularly sure that I have proved anything  other that that the results are very similar between the 5Dmk2 and the 7D on this particular image.  Does it matter?  For me, not really as I am very pleased that there is this level of consistency and I stress for this type of image.

Clearly what I have shown here is very limited and not really scientific in any way.
But  it did prove, at least to me, that the pixels on the 5D are very good, but then I am not sure that that was ever in any doubt.

Where I will expect to start to see differences will be in the full frame depth of field effects when I start doing a bit of macro work later in the year, and also where the subjects are closer with the longer lenses.
But I like the 5Dmk2 that is for sure, and after the 7D the handling is so similar as to make no significant difference.

Martin

A few with the 5Dmk2

It was a pleasant change to have yesterday (Friday) off and with some fairly pleasant weather making it felt like spring, I popped out for a quick scout round my local patch for an hour to see what was about.

Not too much really - just one distant Hare.  I tried three of my locations and only the one.  Still I will keep trying.  But it was lovely to hear the wonderful croak of a Raven overhead, and the drumming of a Great Spotted Woodpecker, a Buzzard sitting on lookout on a telegraph post.  After the cold and gloom of the winter, it really was delightful to watch and listen.....even if the 5D didn't get a click.

Moving on to the River,  I knew there would be something there that I could get.  With the light either in the wrong direction or flat, I thought it would at least be a decent test for checking out image detail.

Click on the image to see in large for detail.  All images were taken with 5Dmk2 and 500f4 ISL.  No processing to speak of, just a minor crop, resize and standard sharpen. I am pleased with the shadow detail.

On arrival back home, I was greeted with the announcement that we had had a fox in the garden, and not the manky one from last year (unless it is better) and the male Blackcap and  Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Ha! - maybe sometimes I should stay at home and not go looking.

The best sighting of the day was a couple of male Siskins - the first I have seen in the garden for three years, and takes this years garden species list up to 25 now.

Today I took a trip down to WWT Slimbridge and gave the 5D a bit more of a run out.  It is GOOD, as you will see in future posts.  Got a lifetime 'tick' while I was there too - although the Siskin in the garden yesterday was a better expereince to be honest.

Martin

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.