TW Blog :: Entries for Photography
Nature never makes things for mean or no usesJohn Locke
The Cornish Daffodils in Bloom
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Spring has well and truly arrived in Cornwall now with the Daffodils trumpeting the passage of the season.
200mm f/2.8 @ 1/400s, ISO 200
I especially like the angles in this photograph thanks to a brisk north westerly breeze blowing off the Celtic Sea. Plus the sharpness and clarity of every water droplet captured with the 200mm L-lens.
Posted on Mar 09, 2009 at 09:44:44.
Common Kestrel in Flight
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Walking from Perseverance Hill to British Camp on the Malvern Hills yesterday we were lucky enough to see a Common Kestrel hunting prey. This magnificent bird of prey was using ridge lift on the Welsh side of Jubilee Hill to soar above the scrub.
A perfect opportunity to test out the telephoto lens which was on the camera ready to go. The Kestrel was about 100 metres away from us and there was a brisk breeze blowing making stabilising the lens a challenge. Even so the Canon 200m f/2.8 L-lens showed off its abilities by locking in perfectly on the soaring bird and keeping focus in AI Servo AF mode.
f/3.2 @ 1/2500s, ISO 200
f/3.2 @ 1/800s, ISO 200
Both pictures have been further cropped in Aperture but still show excellent clarity and detail on the Kestrel's plumage. Shutter was a little slow on the second image but I was shooting in AV mode (on a slightly dark backdrop) rather than manual at the time.
More than happy that this Canon lens is perfectly usable handheld - despite the 320mm cropped focal length on my Canon 40D.
Posted on Mar 02, 2009 at 10:36:31.
Yellows and Greens of Spring
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Took a quick lunch break to give my new Canon 200mm f/2.8 L prime lens a test drive in the garden. The daffodils that are starting to bloom made the perfect subjects for a yellow and green photo shoot to herald in the Spring.
f/2.8 @ 1/6400s
f/6.3 @ 1/1000s
f/2.8 @ 1/8000s
f/2.8 @ 1/3200s
I accidentally shot these photos at an ISO of 800 making the bokeh a little grainy. But that also provided super fast shutter speeds to compensate for the wind (affecting both the plants movements and my control of the lens). It was only when I got the photos on the big screen that I realised how incredibly amazing the quality of the pictures this 200mm L-lens takes. Unfortunately it also really bought home the inadequacies of the Canon 40D viewfinder which seems to struggle with yellows and provides misleading quality due to its low screen resolution. A small price to pay really with the freedom to shoot large numbers of exposures on digital film.
Posted on Feb 26, 2009 at 17:40:37.
My Telephoto Arrives!
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The latest addition to my photography arsenal has arrived in the form of a Canon 200mm f/2.8 L prime telephoto lens. Once again I chose to go for a prime lens simply for the lighter weight at a higher image quality and this L-lens seemed the perfect choice. I would love to get straight outside and have a play but it is dark dank day and I have far more pressing work matters to prioritise.
So for now I had to resort to quickly snapping the baluster of the back stairs through the backdoor window!
200mm - 1/250s @ f/2.8 ISO 100
With the lack of light I planted the camera on my Giottos tripod to avoid any shake shooting below 1/320s (based on the cropped sensor focal length). Focussing was incredibly fast relative to my other lenses.
Hardly the best conditions for a test drive, but even this showed sharpness, clarity and super creamy bokeh! Look forward to doing a proper test drive soon…
Posted on Feb 25, 2009 at 13:47:50.
Winter Snow Pictures in Cornwall
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What a surprise to awake to a winter wonderland like this! We had maybe half an inch of snow the previous afternoon but Tuesday morning (3rd February) heralded several inches of beautiful white fluffy snow. The perfect playground for our little Olive who got her first surfing lesson on the boogie board!
Our home in Blackrock covered in snow
10mm - 1/100s @ f/8 +0.3, ISO 400
No way out as the track is several inches deep in snow and ice
10mm - 1/125s @ f/4 + 0.7, ISO 200
The car is going nowhere today! Covered in snow…
50mm - 1/100s @ f/3.2, ISO 200
Dawn reflections over a now layered pond
20mm - 1/80s @ f/8 +0.3, ISO 200
Another morning snow flurry!
20mm - 1/500s @ f/7 + 0.3, ISO 200
Quite unusual to get so much snow this far south-west and possibly as much as the midlands and south east. An even rarer treat is seeing snow on the Cornish beaches in and around St Ives.
Posted on Feb 05, 2009 at 09:51:22.
