Last weekend was a dark, gloomy and wet one. But since I had not been able to go out the week before, I decided to face the elements anyway and see what would happen. Place of choice were the fishing ponds. I had hoped for some remaining ice with nice patterns, but it had all melted. Birdlife also was not as prolific as it usually is at the ponds.
And thus I resorted to abstracts and details of common subjects, like cattails in the water, reeds and reflections of trees and leaves in the rippled water.
I can really enjoy playing around with focus, blur, long shutterspeeds and lens movements. You never can really predict what the outcome will be and sometimes very interesting photographs are the result.
It also was a very good testdrive for the newly acquired 5D Mark II. The first impression is that the amount of both detail and smoothness from the fullframe sensor is stunning, an so is the overalll image quality. The autofocus is nothing to boast about, but I won’t use it that much anyway since I bought the camera mainly for landscapes and abstracts. Another nit is that the 9 AF points are all located around the center of the viewfinder. Placing a subject well at the edge of the frame using autofocus therefore is a task not achieved as easily as it should be. But, those are nits I knew about when I ordered the camera. For wildlife and action shots, I cling to my trusty old 1D Mark III.
Tree Reflection; Canon 5D Mark II w. 70-200/2.8 L IS II; 0.6s at F11 and ISO200, handheld
