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I wasn’t sure which forum to put this in; it’s a little hardware and a little personal/pub & grill stuff, but it’s a lot of photos, so the gallery it is.
Anyway, I’ve had these for about 5 weeks now:
It’s probably overkill for me, but I wanted a full frame and I figured what good is working all the time if I don’t spend some of it, so I splurged.
I haven’t had much time to do anything with them yet except for a couple of trips we’ve taken. I’ve barely gotten into the manual, but compared to the 30D I previously shot with, this thing’s got more options than I think I could ever hope to use. I think I understand the “what” behind most of them, but I’ll likely be coming here with questions of “why” and “when” for some of it.
The first thing that struck me was the resolution & sharpness as compared to the 30D. I should’ve expected it from just the figures alone, but after being used to 8.2 MP, 22.3 MP was a big step up. While in Chicago, I ended up taking an almost identical shot with the 5D (right) to one I took with the 30D (left) 3 years ago:
Those are scaled full images, so you can see they’re fairly close in zoom factor. They were also both taken with the same lens. But here’s a 100% crop from each:
Chicago
While attending a wedding in Michigan, we drove over to see our daughter in Chicago. This was the first chance I got to play with the 8-15mm fisheye. I gotta say, this lens is a lot of fun. Here are a couple of shots of The Bean (Cloud Gate if you wanna be technical about it), first at 8mm:
and the same spot at 15mm:
This brings up my first question: I’m guessing this is normal for a fisheye, but can anyone confirm that this level of CA at the edges of the lens is expected? Here’s a 100% crop from the shot above:
Notice the cyan at the top/left edge of the building and the magenta along the lower/right edge.
Finally, here’s the harbor near sunset at 15mm:
There are a few more along with larger versions of these here.
Jamaica
We went to Ocho Rios, Jamaica with 5 other couples on a long-planned trip. It also happened to almost coincide with our 25th anniversary, so that made it a little extra special.
We had a great time other than the humidity. We’re less than 30% here in OK but it was 75%+ there (and about 88F). The trick where you put your gear in ziploc baggies and let it acclimate to the temperature/humidity change was an absolute necessity; otherwise, just walking out to the balcony from the room caused an instant layer of condensation so thick that you couldn’t shoot through it.
I ended up getting SCUBA certified and doing 3 dives, so that’s one more check off the bucket list. Even got a chance to practice my skills in a real-life situation thanks to the ineptitude of another new diver next to me, but I’ll save that story for another time.
I didn’t end up taking nearly as many shots as I wanted to due to otherwise staying busy with activities. The fact that most of those activities involved lots of water coupled with the necessity of planning to shoot (see humidity problem above) limited my opportunities. Anyway, on with the pics…
Here’s the view at 8mm from our balcony:
Fishiing & dive boats in the harbor:
The boardwalk & beach at sunset (13mm):
One of my favs – boats at the pier at sunset (15mm):
The obligatory sunset shot:
And finally, here’s a group shot on the pier:
One of the couples was AWOL for this shot. My wife & I are on far camera right. The dude mugging for the camera in the center was one of the grounds photographers; a group of them had gathered to check out my gear while we were shooting. I gotta say, that was probably one of the best things about the place – the staff were the nicest & friendliest of any place I’ve ever stayed.
Several more, including one taken on a Jamaican bobsled, along with larger versions of these here.
The Perseid meteor shower is peaking Saturday night into Sunday morning. Could be good for an astro-porn fix.
Interesting. I’ve had generally poor outcomes from my meteor shooting tries. Any tips you’d like to share?
For me, shooting meteor showers is much like lightning, but at MUCH higher ISOs. I typically go to ISO 800 or 1600 as opposed to my regular ISO 100 or 200 for lightning, and open the aperture up.
I also try to keep exposure times to just below “star trailing.”
Here’s a Quadrantid from a few years back – they were REALLY faint.
You might need to click on that and view Original size to see the meteor trail. EXIF data is public on that, too.
Here’s a Perseid…
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