[SoFoBoMo] Texas cliche
Since my knees are very definitely not in their normal working order, fairgoldberry suggested I go up to Fossil Rim to take pictures today. Fossil Rim is just about the only place I can think of where you can go to take pictures and not have to so much as stand up. All you have to do is drive around and take pictures from your car.
They have lots of handy signs reminding you to stay in your car at all times, in case you forget. They apparently don't have any signs telling the animals to stay out of the car.
This trip to Fossil Rim was multiple firsts for me. First time hot swapping cameras, first really high volume shooting with the 5D, first time doing telephoto work with the 5D.
Hot swapping cameras: this was awesome. I kept the 100-400 on the 5D and the 24-105 on the 20D. Yes, that's counter-intuitive, but you usually don't need the full 640mm reach of the 100-400 + 20D combination out at Fossil Rim (I've done it with just a 70-200 on the 20D and never regretted the lack of reach), and if I'd put the lenses on the opposite cameras I'd have had a gap between 105 mm-e and 160 mm-e. This way I could go from something like 38 mm-e all the way to 400 mm-e, with a nice overlap in the middle. Anyway, it was great to just pick up the other camera when I wanted to switch from long range to close-in shooting. Great fun.
Trying to shoot a bunch of wildlife with the 5D really drove home how much more important fast CF cards are on the larger sensors. Going from a 7 meg file to a 14 meg file, means that writing each file takes twice as long. So what if the buffer is larger and the shutter doesn't trigger as often - the main limit on my shooting speed was writing to the flash card. I've got a bunch of slower cards and one Sandisk Extreme III. That super fast card was really really great. It went by in a flash, comparatively. I'll definitely be buying more of the good cards.
As for telephoto on the 5D, I've just barely started looking at the images, but they look crisper than the same lens on the 20D. I think it's the larger pixels in the 5D being more forgiving of slight defects in the lens. Also, I shot the whole day at ISO 1250 on the 5D. That meant that shutter speeds were usually north of 1/1000 of a second. That will stop a lot of motion. The sensor noise at that ISO is as good as the 20D at ISO 400, if not better. This meant that I could stop down a little, getting the lens to perform a little better, and giving me some leeway on depth of field that I wouldn't have had wide open. The net result is that I think I got more technically good shots than I have on previous visits.
I broke 1250 frames on the 5D before the battery cut out. I must be freakishly lucky, because I don't think it's supposed to do that.
Now, my SoFoBoMo theme is about Central Texas. Fossil Rim is not in Central Texas. Why am I talking about it here? Well, Fossil Rim is about 3.5 hours from my house. 200 miles or so. On the way back, I saw something that just called out for a u-turn. Just as I'm looking for a good bluebonnet picture, since you can't do a photo project in Texas in the spring without one, there are a couple other subjects that you might want. Cross off another cliche subject for the Texas outdoors.
They have lots of handy signs reminding you to stay in your car at all times, in case you forget. They apparently don't have any signs telling the animals to stay out of the car.
This trip to Fossil Rim was multiple firsts for me. First time hot swapping cameras, first really high volume shooting with the 5D, first time doing telephoto work with the 5D.
Hot swapping cameras: this was awesome. I kept the 100-400 on the 5D and the 24-105 on the 20D. Yes, that's counter-intuitive, but you usually don't need the full 640mm reach of the 100-400 + 20D combination out at Fossil Rim (I've done it with just a 70-200 on the 20D and never regretted the lack of reach), and if I'd put the lenses on the opposite cameras I'd have had a gap between 105 mm-e and 160 mm-e. This way I could go from something like 38 mm-e all the way to 400 mm-e, with a nice overlap in the middle. Anyway, it was great to just pick up the other camera when I wanted to switch from long range to close-in shooting. Great fun.
Trying to shoot a bunch of wildlife with the 5D really drove home how much more important fast CF cards are on the larger sensors. Going from a 7 meg file to a 14 meg file, means that writing each file takes twice as long. So what if the buffer is larger and the shutter doesn't trigger as often - the main limit on my shooting speed was writing to the flash card. I've got a bunch of slower cards and one Sandisk Extreme III. That super fast card was really really great. It went by in a flash, comparatively. I'll definitely be buying more of the good cards.
As for telephoto on the 5D, I've just barely started looking at the images, but they look crisper than the same lens on the 20D. I think it's the larger pixels in the 5D being more forgiving of slight defects in the lens. Also, I shot the whole day at ISO 1250 on the 5D. That meant that shutter speeds were usually north of 1/1000 of a second. That will stop a lot of motion. The sensor noise at that ISO is as good as the 20D at ISO 400, if not better. This meant that I could stop down a little, getting the lens to perform a little better, and giving me some leeway on depth of field that I wouldn't have had wide open. The net result is that I think I got more technically good shots than I have on previous visits.
I broke 1250 frames on the 5D before the battery cut out. I must be freakishly lucky, because I don't think it's supposed to do that.
Now, my SoFoBoMo theme is about Central Texas. Fossil Rim is not in Central Texas. Why am I talking about it here? Well, Fossil Rim is about 3.5 hours from my house. 200 miles or so. On the way back, I saw something that just called out for a u-turn. Just as I'm looking for a good bluebonnet picture, since you can't do a photo project in Texas in the spring without one, there are a couple other subjects that you might want. Cross off another cliche subject for the Texas outdoors.