The collected works of ScottyB

After sleeping in until almost midday, Kate and I decided to head out for brekky and ended up at the Lake for some photos.

It was the first time out with the 400D and initial impressions = extremely impressed. There’s really no other way to say it. Everything the 300D did, the 400D does it WAY better. There’s no crazy buffer time, no waiting for it to write a burst to the card, no lengthy delays between switching it on or previewing photos or navigating the menus. It just does it. Exactly what you want and immediately.

Overall, its a breeze to use. You can point, change your settings to suit and snap 10 shots without the camera having a coronary or buckling under what you’ve just asked itself to do. The 300D took a burst of images like you were asking it to donate a kidney. It would think, wait around, consider its options and when it realised there was no other option, it would reluctantly hand it over. The 400D reaches into its abdomen and pulls out that kidney before you’ve finished asking the question. It really is that night and day.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature has decided to grace us with yet another hot, humid, uncomfortably humid, sticky humid (and did I mention humid! day?) overcast day, so the options weren’t great. However, my passion for macro photography came out on such a day. While I had strapped the 75-300 on with the intention of grabbing some shots of birds and boats, with the exception of a lone Seagull and Pelican (both of which were a little shy) there was really nothing happening of merit.

I did however, figure out that the 75-300 works equally well as a macro lens when used from a small (1.5-2m) distance from your subject.

Can’t wait to grab this macro lens this week…

Those of you in the know, know that my trusty, tried and tested, Canon 300D DSLR expired some time ago.

It had a long, enjoyable and hard life.

Everywhere I went, it went. It became my third arm, my own person developing a reputation for never being seen without the camera around my neck. To the point that some people even speculated I wasn’t able to take it off. Ask anyone and they’d tell you ‘Oh yeah, the camera dude’.

So when, after 67,000 frames, the mighty 300D decided to throw a mirror pin and decide it would only let me take photos in M (manual) mode with the lens in full MF (manual focus) it all started getting a little impossible. Gone was the freedom of catching a bird taking off from the Lake and tracking its path through the sky as it meandered and floated in front of the clouds. Now, I had to make constant adjustments, cast the camera across the sky and suddenly it was overexposed, underexposed, so a quick crank of the shutter in either direction was needed. Then the subject would change direction, further away, closer up.. all needed minor adjustments to the focus ring and constantly. A perfect shot was few and far between.

Sure there were exceptions. The Hunter Valley Gardens shoot indeed netted me some of my favourite photos. Considering the horrendous weather, almost non-stop rain and conditions for shooting (extreme low light, cold, soaked-to-the-skin) I was happy - and renewed in my photo taking, with the results.

So the hunt began. I got my finger out and looked for a camera.

Enter the 400D. And a great deal to boot.

Canon EOS 400D
18-55 kit lens
75-300 enthusiast lens
SanDisk Extreme III 4GB CF card
BG-E3 Battery Grip
2 x NB2LH batteries

And I was on my way.

Macro lens ordered and should be with me before the end of next week.

Stay tuned, its good to be back in the game