Next Year
I welcomed January in with my birthday on the 6th (rare day off) so went into Central London for the day, starting with a walk from Waterloo to covent garden. Me being me of course, and it being a beautiful blue sky day, i had my camera with me to try and get a quick panorama of the London skyline.
London Skyline looking towards westminster.
This was a quick stitch job on Lightroom. Light was amazing so was shooting i think at around F/18 at 100 ISO on the 35mm F/1.4. This was hand held as i think chelsea would have killed me if i had taken my tripod with me too. (more on tripods later)
After food we ended up at the Natural History Museum for my annual wildlife photography of the year awards trip. I love this award and the gallery at the Natural History museum, and i love to walk around the gallery of the latest winners and entries. I always find myself looking at the photos vital statistics to compare to my own gear which annoys chelsea no end when i tell her 'ohh thats my camera' i think she wanted to hit me after the 7th time. Last year i agreed with the overall winner but this year i was a little disappointed. not so much with the image it is a wonderful image. (see below) but on how the image was taken.
entwined lives by Tim Laman
Now dont get me wrong it is a great image....but, and for me it is a big but, it was taken by a remote GOPRO camera mounted on the side of a tree. Now i believe for an image to win this sort of competition it needed to be taken by the photograher themselves, with his or her camera, getting close to amazing animals in its natural environment, behaving as they would in the wild and getting a shot of something maybe not witnessed or rarely seen or a juxtaposition with something unexpected, not just popping a remote camera up a tree and seeing what images you get from it. Maybe its just me but there were so many other images that were (i thought) 'better' or at least took more skill and effort to capture from the photographers point of view. This was a wildlife photographer of the year after all so i like to think it is as much about the effort the photographer took and the skills they used in order to get the final image. ok he did rig it to the top of a tree so i guess there is that side of it but i still think there were more deserving images (see a few below). OK rant over (i did still buy the book)
Going to the awards gallery and seeing all these amazing images got me thinking. I dont have a 'wildlife' lens. I have been out so many times before and been unable to get the reach needed to photograph some things that are just too small and far away. So i went on the hunt for a new lens that i could use as a designated wildlife lens to try and capture what i was missing when i just couldnt get close enough to the subject. I started looking at trading in an older lens that i have not used or replaced (50mm) with a longer, wildlife lens.
straight away the cost of the longer lenses are mental. Not only expensive (£7000+) they are massive and i just cant see myself dragging this size of lens around with me. (not to mention i could not afford one). So i started my search with the canon 100-400mm (see below)
Canon 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 MK1
This was my first choice for a while and i was close to the swap, it has image stabalisation and it has the versitility for 100 all the way to 400mm. However after reading lots of reviews the MK1 (which i could afford) was simply not sharp enough. You were able to get reasonable images but at the end of the day it was not sharp enough for what i wanted and at F/4.5 it was similer to the next lens i looked at....
So my search continued....and continued, until i heard about the Canon 400mm F/5.6
Canon 400mm F/5.6 L USM
This lens is not perfect by any means which as i have found is the norm when it comes to long focal lengths (unless you spend a fortune) The 400mm has a low F stop so will be tricky to use in Low light but in good natural light it shines. It also does not have the Image stabalisation but i dont feel this is really needed as you will be looking to shoot at 1/800th of a second or higher anyway so i dont feel this will be an issue or a minus when looking at this lens. It is a beast of a lens as well, with a built in lens hood and build quality like a tank so should be great to use outdoors and could take the odd bump more than most lenses could. It is also fixed at 400mm which could be seen as a bad thing as it is hard to get used to, but as i have found when learning to use the prime, fixed lenses i have come to enjoy using them more (i am the zoom) The main reason i plumped for this lens as well was exactly that - it was a prime. This means that if used correctly this lens will produce much sharper images. It is also a lot lighter than zoom lenses and for a long lens this was also a factor when hand holding and taking it out and about. I felt i would use this more as it was lighter.
The challenge is to get used to this lens and get the most out of it. Understand its limitations and accept that it needs good light and/or a tripod to get the best out of it. I have also learnt it is sharpest at F/8 and as i have a cropped 7D which gives it x1.6 crop factor it can actually makes it a 640mm lens!! its a good job i hung onto the 7D once it was replaced as it may work as a good wildlife camera. Fngers crossed, with time i can achieve sharp, usable images with the second hand 400mm lens i swapped out for my old, original 5Omm F/1.8.
Not only did i swap a lens this month but a new tripod was ordered to take over from my aging/dying Benro Travel Angel tripod that i have travelled with around India and Nepal.
Benro Travel Angel
The main issue that i began to find with it was that the screw legs were not for me. They would be pain to set up and put down and sometimes parts of the legs would simply slide out completely when being opened. It has served me well when travelling but as i found when i last used it in Cornwall at the end of last year it was a faff to work with and was clearly not enough to hold my equipment. I do like the monopod addition that this lens gives you (one leg unscrews to become one) but i mainly ended up using that for climbing Annapurna in Nepal as a walking stick and not to actually put my camera on. This lead to me asking for a new tripod and ball head for my birthday.
Manfrotto MHXPRO-BHQ2 ball head
A gift from my parent for my birthday was this amazing new ballhead that i had selected from Manfrotto. I had heard good things about this head and i love the quick release plate that this uses as well as how sturdy it is.
With this ballhead i was then on the hunt for the perfect tripod to go with it. This was an even harder decision than the Lens was to decide on, as i have had such an issue with my older tripod and getting it right was harder than initially thought. I was torn between one that was small and easy to carry about, to one that was sturdy and better suited to take my equipment but a lot larger. When i did narrow down my search i was left with 2 different options (see below)
Manfrotto 055 4 carbon fibre tripod
Manfrotto 190 4 Carbon fibre tripod
Now at first glance these two tripods do seem exactly the same, and this was what i thought so i had to take to youtube to watch clip after clip to understand the actual differences and basically there is only one real difference, the size. They are both similar size when closed but the 055 series is much bigger when open which for me is a good thing. I am not tall but i do find that tripods i have used do not go high enough and i end up stuping over to look through the lens. The tripod is carbon fibre so will be light weight still but will be noticably bigger than my Benro which i will have to get used too. The main worry i still have is if it will pack into a small suitcase for my trip to Bali in June. Hopefully it does. I eventually went for the 055 tripod with the 4 lock legs (giving a smaller close down size) in carbon fibre.
vertical central column on Manfrotto 055
Both tripods also have the feature of the middle column being able to be flipped 90 degrees which i am hoping will be good for macro work.
My main thing though for me was the legs and the snap closed function of these two tripods that will hopefully mean an end to legs falling off and long pack up and put up time. Fingers crossed this will get me using the tripod more in the future (much to chelseas displeasure im sure)
Hopefully i will get some shots that i can share on here soon with all this new kit combo!!
