I wanted more.
More reach when it came to shooting wildlife. I had gotten a bigger lens, the teleconverter that didn’t exactly do what I wanted. It was time for another body, and this time I wanted the crop factor. I had the full frame covered already with the 5D.
I had been looking into the 7D for a while, and what I really wanted was the mark II. But that was twice as expensive. It was a balancing act between what I could afford to spend on this hobby and what I knew one day I would be upgrading to anyway. But on the 21st of June I got enough of the “It’s my birthday and fuck it it’s just money” vibes.
So an order was placed on Amazon, (where I’ve bought all my used gear, talked about in previous posts) for one Canon 7D for $270.
I also picked up two 32GB flash cards, one for the 7D and one for the 5D. And one last thing to tie it up with a ribbon was a clip from Peak Design.
I do like this clip, although it probably wasn’t designed for what I was using it for. A few days later I purchased a battery grip for the 7D, after it arrived and I found out the one for the 5D Mark II wouldn’t fit.
So now my carrying capacity included the 7D with a grip and the Tamron 150-600. Which I wore on my hip by having the Peak Design clip attached to a tactical belt I’ve had since I was a kid and got it with a vest I played airsoft in.
I would also still carry the 5D and other lenses in a bag so I went out with almost everything. But on the night of the 24th, the weather was less than ideal. It was cool to sit in a parking lot while it started to storm and watch it roll in.
Canon 5D Mark II w/28-135mm @28 - 1/500 Sec - F3.5 - ISO 400
The following night was better weather wise. I packed up and headed to a local park, where the first thing I would come across was a butterfly.
Canon 7D w/Tamron 150-600mm @552 - 1/800 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Canon 7D w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/640 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
I also wanted to play around with the 50mm I rarely used. Even though it had the largest aperture.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Yongnuo 50mm (very cropped) - 1/100 Sec - F1.8 - ISO 100
After that I walked around the park for a few hours taking pictures of this or that. I did see a hawk come in onto a nearby tree branch at one point. However at that point I was wandering through the trail in the woods, so not a lot of light. And the sun was behind the hawk at this point.
Canon 7D w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/100 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
A lot of the images were beyond blurry, I honestly don’t remember if I was shooting handheld or not. I do know I would bring my tripod, set up the camera on it and then just extend the legs and walk around with it more or less like a monopod. So it’s possible that’s what helped me get this one clear shot. Since I was shooting well below the shutter/length - 1/1 recommendation. And keep in mind it would be a while before I found out about that and included the crop factor of the new body.
The only other thing I saw that night was a group of deer, one grown and two young. Slowly making their way through the woods. They came fairly close to me, within 20 feet or so. Very used to seeing people in the park. But by that point the sun had basically set and none of the images I took came out at all.
Two nights later I would go out again, to a different park this time. I hadn’t been to this park before, so I was immersed in the landscape of the place. And the water spouts they had going.
Canon 5D Mark II w/28-135mm @28 - 1/3200 Sec - F5 - ISO 400
Shooting them side by side is one thing. But what if I wanted them both in focus while facing the spouts from the front?
One way would be to close the f stop as much as it would go. But if you do that, you’ll either get a very dark photo with a fast shutter speed like I wanted to freeze the water. Or you have to lower said shutter speed and you don’t get those clearly defined water droplets. So you set the camera up on the tripod and you take a bunch of pictures without moving it. Changing the focus point from the front fountain to the back fountain. Then merge them together.
The last image I’ll show you is one towards the end of the day, as the sun was setting and I was looking at the water flowing over some rocks. I wanted to play around with longer exposure as I had done previously with waterfalls.
Canon 5D Mark II w/28-135mm @60 - 1.3 Sec - F16 - ISO 100
Long exposure. Big F stop number to get as much in focus and not let too much light in while the sensor is hanging out during that long exposure. Low ISO because again, light isn’t an issue.
I’ll also mention that this trip and shortly after this picture is where I learned about making sure that where you set up the tripod is secure. I was walking around a little pond that had probably hundreds of seemly invisible frogs up on the shore. As you get close they all would jump in the water. But I could never actually see them, they must have been the same color as the dirt.
This would go on for a few minutes as I made my way around the pond. Until I heard the big splash. The frogs I had barely seen, more visible once they got in the water, were tiny. This sound was big, like real big. I quickly grabbed the long lens and 7D and just kind of left the 5D and tripod where I could quickly set it up. But I wasn’t checking to make sure it was secure, I really should have laid it down.
Instead it fell, off the grass onto the gravel walking trail. Thankfully it wasn’t lens first, it twisted when it fell and landed on its side. I did have the remote trigger still set up, so it crushed the plug. I remember this because looking at my Amazon order history, right after I got the new camera I also purchased a replacement cable for the remote trigger.
I also never saw whatever made the big splash.