Since the purchase of the 5D mark II, I had only used it for landscapes and abstract close-ups. The image quality blew me away and I really wanted to shoot some feathers with the camera, to see how the feather detail would look and how smooth the out-of-focus backgrounds would be. So for the first time in a while, I went to the feeding station and spent 4 hours staring out of the lenshole. It seems the time of feeders that are bustling with bird activity is now behind us. Temperatures were above 10 degrees Celcius and although there were many birds present in the small patch of mixed woodland, they were more interested in singing and checking out nest boxes than coming down for a quick bite. All in all I took 4 photographs in those 4 hours. A relatively terrible average, but at least I got a nice portrait of the male Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocops major, Grote bonte specht). As expected, detail is amazing and the image hardly needed any sharpening in Photoshop. I also like the smoothness of the background as compared to the images from the 1D Mark III. Experiment succeeded.
Now can we please move directly into spring?
Great Spotted Woodpecker; Canon 5D Mark II w. 500/4L IS and 1.4x; 1/200s at F5.6 and ISO200; tripod from hide
