Fun with snow and sleds
While visiting my parents in upstate New York over the weekend, Eitan and Nathan had the chance to go sledding for the first time in their lives. This also provided me with a great chance to test the AF in the 5d Mark II.
My parents pulled down the toboggan I had used when I was little and amazingly it still worked! My father would then pull them up the short hill that I used to go sledding down and let them go.
I used my 70-200 4L IS for these shots, as it has the quickest AF and was the best focal length to use here. I shot most all of these using AF focus. I probably should have used servo.
In terms of comparing the 5D Mark II with my old 5D, I do think that the AF is a bit better. I do not think that the difference is huge, but there is a difference. I’m sure that a 1D series body would be far better, but for my uses it seems to do the trick.
In the past with my 5D a number of shots like these would have turned out blurry and I would have deleted them. I did get a few of these shots, but they were probably only ten percent of the total. A number of the shots were not sharp at 100% - but for the sizes I will print these that is OK. I would say about 40% of the shots I kept were sharp at 100%, or about a third of the total. For me, that isn’t too bad of a ratio.
After this experience, we plan to pick up a toboggan ourselves and take them to the mountains for some more fun. Unfortunately this time we had to quit after about twenty minutes because they did not have proper winter gear on and we feared they would get too cold.
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Tags: AF, autofocus, Kids, photography, sled, snow, toboggan