What a week! I was woken this morning by a flash of light outside my window, several seconds later the unfamiliar sound of thunder followed, first time I’ve encountered lightning in London. I miss thunder and lightning, it puts things into perspective. But this was only 1 of many exciting things to happen this week.
You may have noticed a link to the right of screen for Simon Bills Photography on Facebook, yes, that’s right, in an act of unrivalled self indulgence I have set up page whereby people can officially become “fans”. Of course that’s not how I see it, I just see it as a group of people who like photography, but I’m curious to see if any leads come from this foray into social network marketing.
As exciting as these things are there was something EVEN MORE EXCITING that happened this week (no, I’m not talking about the Netherlands beating England in the T20 world cup, or about Feds winning his long awaited French Open), my new Canon 5D Mk II arrived!! Woo hoo.
You know, until you’ve experienced 21 megapixels of camera it’s really hard to feel like your life is in any way complete, I used to be happy with a mere 10 but now I realise how lacking my life was. I’m kidding of course, before Canon released the 5D mk II I was hoping for 15mp, but it seems like Canon have gone all out on the megapixel war while Nikon are taking a more sensible approach to camera development, either way it’s unlikely I’ll be shooting at full res very often for the time being as my trusty little laptop struggles a bit to handle 27mb RAW files! However, I have taken a few shots at full res and the results are absolutely stunning, the following 3 shots are various crops of the first image, I’ve reduced them in size and quality for the net so the original image is sharper than this appears, but you get the idea of the copping possibilities. This is also hand held (1/250) so sharpness would be improved had I used a tripod.
I’ve yet to properly put her through her paces, besides a quick walk to the supermarket to grab some delicious ingredients for a tasty lunch. There were a couple of interesting old cars along the way (check the licence plates on the Torino!) and some pigeons, but I’m looking forward to having a proper session, and I’m now even more exciting for the wedding I’m shooting on Saturday.
One of the reasons I wanted this camera, besides the full frame sensor and the benefits that brings, was the high ISO performance. ISO is basically how sensitive the camera’s sensor is to light, the higher the number the more sensitive and the better it is for light light shooting (dark churches etc). The next 3 images are more for the camera heads out there but I’ve tested at ISO 1600, 6400 and 25600 by shooting in jpeg and applying no PP work in Lightroom.
ISO 1600
ISO 6400
ISO 25600
These are hardly scientific tests, no tripod and the subject isn’t the best, but you get the idea that you can get great results at 1600, decent results at 6400 and at a stretch you could probably use 25600 but I wouldn’t recommend it.
One of these days I’ll take advantage of the full HD video this puppy offers and put a video together, but don’t hold your breath, I need to get some video editing software and learn how to use it first and at the moment I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
