I was about to answer her when I noticed something interesting on the tree outside.  The drops on the tree seemed to be glistening and it looked like prime drop territory!  Luckily I had brought all of my equipment so I put on my macro lens and went outside to take some shots!

I could tell as I was taking the shots that I was mistaken.  I had thought there was potential for an award winning shot there but the situation wasn’t as good as I had hoped for.  Because the limbs were rather far apart, I got a black background instead of a lighter one.  It was not possible to use a tripod this close in so I finished taking some shots and went back inside.

I wasn’t too bummed though, as it was fun taking shots for a bit, and as long as I could take ice melting shots, I was fine with whatever amount of snow came our way.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

While the snow storm here would be a normal occurrence where I grew up in Western New York, here it really is something – the most snow I have seen here since I moved here about eight years ago.

We received about seven inches where we are – still tame to what I was used to back East.  However, here they are absolutely unprepared for any kind of snow.  They lack the snow plows and salt trucks and most people have no idea how to drive in this type of weather.  Also, the hills here can make things interesting.

It was rather funny driving places and seeing tons of people walking – often hauling a sled containing their kids behind them.  Many people here are just too freaked out to even get into a car.

The nice thing about the paucity of cars though is we turned the hill on our cul-de-sac into a nice sledding hill.

From a photography standpoint, I have switched back to take kids pictures in RAW format.  I had switched to jpg for my kids shots recently due to the huge RAW file sizes of the 5D Mark II.  However, due to shots like this it is a better idea to just stay in RAW.

I will probably spend some time later fixing this shot up in Photoshop – but if I took the shot in RAW in the first place it would have been much easier.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.