Doubling Up On Peebles Island

For the first time in quite a while I was on Peebles with two bodies and lenses. I carried my full frame body with my 24-105mm lens and my crop sensor body with a 70-300mm lens. With the crop factor, the 70-300mm lens has the field of view of a 112-480mm lens on a full frame (or 35mm film) body.

After having no luck selling my 200mm L lens, the proceeds from which I was intending to buy the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM lens, I instead traded the lens for a used 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM lens at Ray Supply in Glens Falls. The DO stands for Diffractive Optics and it is one of only two DO lenses Canon makes.

Diffractive Optics lenses are smaller than regular lenses and have some interesting characteristics like a bit (or more) of softness and a lot of flair. This DO zoom was introduced by Canon in 2004 and still is listed as a current lens although I doubt they make very many. The lens retails new for $1,399 although the used value is just a fraction of that, usually around $500. I've only had the lens for a few days although so far I'm happy with the trade.

It was a foggy morning early on as I was on Peebles Island around 7:15 AM. By the time I left the fog had burned off and the sun was out.

I'll start with some shots from the full frame body. These are HDR composites with exposure information for the normally exposed file.

32mm, f/8, 1/125 sec., ISO 200

40mm, f/8, 1/350 sec., ISO 200

105mm, f/8, 1/125 sec., ISO 200

And now for the shots with the crop sensor EOS 7D and the new to me 70-300mm lens. None of these images are cropped and all are single files.

275mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec., ISO 800

300mm, f/5.6, 1/1500 sec., ISO 800

300mm, f/5.6, 1/20 sec., ISO 800

300mm, f/5.6, 1/350 sec., ISO 800

Finishing Up August With a Mix

I'm going to share some photos from the time since my last blog post to end up the month of August.

First, I made some shots at a flute concert held in an old stone church last Friday. I had my 5D Mark III and 50mm f/1.8 STM lens. 

The next morning I did some walking around Cohoes and caught a different view of the water tower on Peebles Island and some low water on the first branch of the Mohawk River from a bridge on Ontario Street.

Lastly, yesterday I was walking on Van Schaick Island and ran into a pretty cool buck which was bigger than I am. I was about fifty feet away from him and didn't really want to hang around as he didn't show the slightest fear of me.

Old Canal Reflections

Once again, I was out with a crop sensor body and a 200mm lens looking for wildlife to shoot. This time up along the old Champlain Canal North of Waterford, NY. Like last time, I didn't get wildlife shots but came away with some decent reflections in the dark, still waters of the canal.

Here are some of the results, all single file images processed normally in Canon's DPP software.

Canon 7D, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, f/2.8, 1/500 sec., ISO 400

Canon 7D, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, f/2.8, 1/125 sec., ISO 400

Canon 7D, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, f/4, 1/1500 sec., ISO 400

Canon 7D, EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, f/2.8, 1/250 sec., ISO 400