Just a quick experiment from the weekend:

1/50 sec at F10, ISO 500 at 100mm (with flash)

The ISO setting was a mistake, got to admit. It’s only the second time I’ve done that, where I’ve taken some potentially interesting shots and got home to discover that the ISO was turned up to 11. The first time was a day trip to London, and got home to ISO 1600 on my 400D and totally unusable results. The results from a trip to the back yard are a little less traumatic :). The higher ISO is handled better on the 7D, but it’s still a bit noisy at 100%. I quite like the shot. The composition is always a fluke under these types of circumstances, and the lavender in the top left foreground is a bit distracting, but the focus on the bee is pretty sharp.

I’m going to start experimenting with much faster shutter speeds with the flash on faster moving objects in the sort of light these pictures were taken. Compositionally, this is better, but there at 1/50 second, there was enough light to expose the residual smudges most notable on the bee’s abdomen:

1/50 sec at F9, ISO 500 at 100mm

I’ve been a bit idle on the website front for the last couple of months, partly because I have a new job that is taking up some more of my time. In the intervening period I’ve had a splurge on equipment, starting with a new body – the 7D – at the start of February. It’s a fabulous piece of kit, and a noticeably bigger step up than my last upgrade between the 400D and 40D. The autofocus is much more sophisticated and, based on my limited experience with a D300, firmly in Nikon territory in terms of quality. The 8 frames a second has proven pretty useful for sport and wildlife.

I was over at the HQ of the RSPB today with a mate, and managed to get a couple of passable shots of a woodpecker, something I’ve been hankering after for months. If you have ever tried to take a picture of one you will know they are incredibly nervous, and very very tough to get a passable shot of. A great opportunity [in a hide] today was marred slightly by not-great light: as this was taken at 1/100 second at 400mm, it’s surprising this shot isn’t softer than it turned out:

1/100 sec, ISO 100, 400mm at F5.6

1/100 sec, ISO 100, 100mm at F8

1/100 sec, ISO 100, 100mm at F8

These were shot on full manual. The reflection from the flash is a little harsh, so the output on the second shot is reduced by 2/3.

A few shots from the weekend, using the flash to freeze water droplets striking the surface of a mango. The use of the mango is purely for the textures. The background didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped: we have a composite work surface in the kitchen which is flecked with highly reflectively pieces of mineral, and I’m confident that my wife would shoot me if I coloured them in with a black marker :).

1/5 sec at F8, ISO 200 at 100mm

1/5 sec at F8, ISO 200 at 100mm

1/10 sec at F8, ISO 200 at 100mm

1/5 sec at F8, ISO 200 at 100mm

I think this is my favourite:

1/13 sec at F8, ISO 200 at 100mm

I may have another attempt at this: ideally I’d like to get full diameter of the splash pattern into focus, which means pushing the aperture a lot deeper. The main problem was that the ambient light was much too low, even at F8. Another problem I had in an earlier attempt was with the water leaving distorted trails on the image, as there was just enough light across the shutter setting to be exposed, above and beyond what the flash was freezing. I was going to try second curtain, to see if that would help and decided it wouldn’t, so went for the less technical solution of changing where the water droplet landed.