Tuesday 11 October 2011

Test drive

My old EOS 5 has been replaced with its successor, the EOS 5d Mark II.

I've also replaced my old 50 f1.8 with the new 1.4 version. Last Sunday I decided to test both out on a walk.

Fresh out of the box


A friend told me about a popular trail called the "1000 Steps" in the nearby Kanton (county) of Aargau. which leads up the side of a hill. I thought to myself that one thousand steps is only a name. It's probably a couple of hundred at most....

 First image with the new combo. 
1/400 sec Av Mode at f2.8

 1000 Steps (in local dialect)
1/250 sec at f2.5

 Big mistake. 

 One thousand steps is actually 1140 steps which go up an incline of about thirty degrees.

 The steps are thoughtfully labelled.

The first one hundred were OK. Perhaps because I had the rucksack on my back and was leaning forward. This adjusted my centre of gravity forwards and "helped" (maybe only psychologically) to keep up an even pace.

Another 600 to go.
Or so I thought.....

I was really pleased that I had the rucksack with me. I would really have considered giving up if I'd had my shoulder bag with me. With the rucksack, I had both hands free to steady and guide myself.
The Hama Katoomba 190RL



Over the halfway mark but still 
another 400 to go.

It's a bit of a let down when you reach the 1000 steps mark and there's still more steps to go!! Another one hundred and forty to be exact.

Steps as far as you can see.

Heart pounding and completely out of breath, I reached the top forty five minutes after setting off. "So what was at the top?" I hear you ask. Nothing much. Just a forest trail and a vantage point about three minutes walk from the top of the steps.

A place to rest and gaze out over the county.
1/200 at f13 (see here)

This is one of my favourite images taken on that day with the 50mm lens. There is no Photoshop jiggery-Pokery involved. I processed the RAW file in DPP, sharpened it a bit and added some saturation. All in all I am well pleased with the camera.


 1/80 sec at f2.8


Thanks for reading. BTW All images were taken with the 200 ISO speed set on the camera.

2 comments:

  1. Loved the post Tom. Great pictures. Sindhoor

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  2. Thanks for the comment and for visiting Sindhoor.

    ReplyDelete