Finishing Up June

The past couple of days I've been out with the 5D Mark III and 85mm lens and the 7D Mark II with 70-300mm lens. Looking ahead, next Saturday is the Steamboat Meet in Waterford.

5D Mark III, EF 85mm f/1.8 at f/3.5

5D Mark III, EF 85mm f/1.8 at f/2.8

5D Mark III, EF 85mm f/1.8 at f/4. 100% crop

7D Mark II, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II at f/8

7D Mark II, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II at f/8

7D Mark II, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II at f/6.7

5D Mark III and 40mm Pancake Lens

I'm still bringing the backpack with almost my complete kit except flashes,  but I've been using my second 5D Mark III body and the 40mm pancake lens for the most part. These photos are all made with that combination.

Yesterday, I was hoping for a decent rainbow at Cohoes Falls after the rain we'd had along with a pretty strong north wind. The missing ingredient was strong sunlight. Also, a north wind carries the mist away from the falls while a south wind builds the mist up at the base of the falls for a stronger rainbow in the late afternoon.

On Thursday, the New York State Canal Corporation tweeted a photo from 1919 of Lock E2 in Waterford with some old style canal boats. This morning, I wanted to reproduce that scene as best I could. I know that the first boats go through this lock around 7:00 AM so I headed over and waited. Here is the photo tweeted by the Canal Corp. along with a couple of my attempts at reproduction.

Finally, here is a scenic of the Hudson River made on my walk over to Waterford this morning.

Back to the Complete Kit

As I said, this always happens. I've been shooting with both the 5D Mark III with the 24-105mm lens and the 7D Mark II with the 70-300mm lens. It really is the best of all my possible combinations.

So the big Think Tank backpack gets lugged around and I carry one or both cameras on straps. I do have a used mid sized Think Tank holster on the way for the longer lens combination to go with a shorter holster for the full frame body and lens which I can wear on a Think Tank belt system.

Here are a few from recent days, all single files, no bracketing.

EOS 7D Mark II, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM at 135mm

EOS 7D Mark II, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM at 165mm

EOS 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM at 24mm

EOS 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM at 55mm

7D Mark II, 17-40mm and 70-300mm

After going to a larger bag twice since I decided to use the crop sensor body in a smaller kit, I now think I'm set with the two lenses in the title, the 24mm pancake and the 50mm f/1.8 STM. The Speed Freak shoulder bag is carry-able for an extended time and it also can convert to a waist bag to help distribute the weight if necessary.

This morning on Peebles Island I used both zoom lenses. I'll put the focal length (and equivalent) in the captions.

70mm (112mm eq.)

256mm (410mm eq.)

17mm (27mm eq.)

32mm (51mm eq.)

40mm (64mm eq.)

100% crop - 300mm (480mm eq.)

KISS Kit

One of the things I like to do is to put together small bags of gear, either for a particular purpose or not, and intend to use that limited kit for a period of time. It almost never works out though.

I always go back to my complete kit in my big backpack. Which actually makes sense. Why handicap your photos by using less than the best equipment available?

But, for now, I'm using my EOS 7D Mark II with my two EF-S lenses which are designed for crop sensor cameras, the 24mm f/2.8 pancake lens and the 60mm f/2.8 macro lens. These are the equivalent full frame focal lengths of 38.4mm and 96mm.

The 7DII has a built in flash so I don't need to include a speedlite. I've got the kit in a ThinkTank Mirrorless Mover shoulder bag.

Her are two shots showing the focal lengths as I described above:

24mm (38.4mm eq.)

60mm (96mm eq.)

Here are two shots from this morning with the 24mm lens showing the two bridges to Peebles Island which you can see in the 24mm photo above.

South Bridge to Peebles Island

North Bridge to Peebles Island

And here are some shots from yesterday afternoon with the 60mm macro lens.

UPDATE: I've already made a slight adjustment to the KISS Kit. The Mirrorless Mover bag was a bit too small as I was walking around this morning, lens changes were difficult. So I decided to move the kit to a Case Logic Kontrast bag I use with a full frame camera, 24-105mm lens and flash.

This change allows for a larger lens attached to the camera so I decided to add the 17-40mm lens to the kit. This is the super weather proof combination I used in the rain in Maine in April. The 17-40mm lens also allows a wider view than the 24mm pancake.

ANOTHER UPDATE 6/9/2019: I walked up the old Champlain Canal this morning with the kit as described above. There's a tweet here. But, I missed the long lens capability, which is where the 7DII shines. So, I've moved to a slightly bigger bag, the ThinkTank Speed Freak and added the EF 70-300mm lens. I also swapped out the 60mm macro for the 50mm STM to shed a little weight. We'll see how long this lasts.

Paddling the Waterford Flight of Locks

Last September I shot a benefit event called Kayaking 4 Meso which involved kayakers traveling down through the Waterford flight of locks on the Saturday of Tugboat Roundup weekend. Photos of that event can be seen here.

I saw a similar event publicized for this morning. I think it may have been organized by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor but sometimes groups publicize events but aren't organizing them.

In any case, I decided to intercept the flotilla at some point along the flight of locks and ended up catching them as they were waiting to descend lock E5 so I waited at lock E4 to catch them transiting toward the lock and exiting below. I used both a 5D Mark III with the EF 24-105mm f.4L lens and the 7D Mark II with the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II lens.

Here some results with the full gallery located at https://trulandphotography.com/ptf2019.