Even though I haven’t checked in with you yet this year and it’s almost mid-February again, I still want to wish you a Happy New Year. Above all, of course, I wish you good health and that you get through the corona pandemic as well as possible.
I’ve got a lot of new stuff.
The year started with me finally putting my long planned project into action: I have made myself independent with Five-Birds Photography and registered a business. Of course only as a sideline, I continue to provide fire protection in power plants (by the way, I have nothing to do with the power plant in Nuremberg, which went up in flames last week with media attention)!
News from the beaver
When I was with Othmar at the beaver again the other day (it was snowing and bitterly cold, thanks to the trade license I was allowed to leave the apartment after 21:00 without any problems despite the lockdown), I realized that it is quite dark with my small flashlight, and my previous lighting for night photography is simply completely insufficient. Nevertheless I managed to take some nice pictures of this cute little animal.
New light
At home in the warm room, I researched what lamps are available on the market, and was lucky that my favorite manufacturer Fenix has a new lamp on the market. You can get the specs from this link . Enclosed also three views of this really strong floodlight, which will be useful to me not only for outdoor photography.
New toy
At the Beaver I also had a detailed discussion with Othmar about the purchase of a new camera. Canon has now released the new flagship and with the Canon EOS R6 and the Canon EOS R5 finally the first really very good mirrorless cameras from Canon on the market (Sony was until now the sole top dog in this segment).
I then thought and researched a bit (and made the big mistake of watching Stefan Wiesner’s test video, which is well worth seeing ) and was thrilled by the results and the quality, especially in the film area, of the Canon EOS R5. Since I won’t be going abroad this year, like last year, and therefore won’t be making any investments in this area, I thought about why I should wait a few days before buying a new camera. So I called my trusted photo dealer in Nuremberg and was able to hold the new Canon EOS R5 in my hands on the same day. So here’s something really new. Unfortunately I had to wait one more day until I could take the first pictures, because the necessary adapter for my lenses still had to be delivered (unfortunately I only have an adapter of a third party manufacturer, and have to wait 2 to 3 months for the original Canon adapter, because it is completely sold out).
Since the weather was quite bad and I didn’t really feel like going out into nature in the cold and hazy weather, I first tried out the camera in the home studio and stacked a few crystals and fossils. I used the R5 and the Canon EF 100mm / f2.8 L IS USM macro lens with a +5 diopter achromatic conversion lens. You can see some results here:
When it snowed heavily, I quickly set up the camera and had a funny idea for a little time-lapse movie. Again, the new camera does a really good job and I no longer have to rely on external interval triggers as the internal shutter finally triggers to the millisecond.
The weather finally got better for the weekend. So I used Sunday morning to visit the bird sanctuary Mohrhof near Bienengarten with a friend.
Unfortunately there was not a single bird to be seen far and wide and the four wild geese passing overhead were just too fast for me. Instead, two pretty dogs ran across my path, which I was able to photograph almost unnoticed thanks to the long focal length of 600 mm.
On the way back we wanted to stop in Dechsendorf, but we turned around at the sight of the crowds on the frozen lake.
That’s it for now with “News from 5bp”, I’m going to test the camera further, I’ve already taken some new time-lapse pictures (and I’m planning to do so) and I’ll probably release episode three of my series “TIMELAPSED – A tribute to Koyaanisqatsi” in the next weeks (click here to get to Episode 01 and here to Episode 02) times.
Oh yes…. I still have to finish the film about the winter birds in the Sauerland, as well as the film about the Lost-Places photography in the Himbeerpalast Erlangen, and and and….. You see, I don’t get bored and you can expect new things here soon.
Until then, stay healthy and don’t let the pandemic make you small. There will be better times.
Best wishes from your Five-Birds.
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