Spring Photo Trip – What worked.

So how did the trip go? Well as you have seen in my previous blog entries the main photographs I wanted was of Tintern Abbey and of Symonds Yat.

Tintern Abbey

The Tintern Abbey shoot was very challenging, getting a clear shot of the Abbey was difficult. For the Abbey shot I used the Ebony 45S large format camera. For the rest of the day I used the Leica M8, as its so small and light but performs extremely well.

Symonds Yat

The photographs I took from Symonds Yat Rock were all either with the Nikon DSLR’s or again the Ebony. The above shot was a HDR composite taken with the Nikon D200 and 24-70mm f/2.8. I bracketed widely because the light was very flat at the start of the day. I thought HDR might lift the shot and make it more interesting.

The bird photography was a little disappointing but you cannot make the birds perform as you want, only set yourself up in the best spot and wait. This time it did not work but maybe next time.

The shots in the garden of the bird feeder went well, but then using bait to bring the birds to the exact spot could be considered cheating.

Bird Life-2

Camera wise, I took quite a lot of equipment with me, the Ebony kit, the SLR kit, the Leica kit and the Nikon Series One kit. Of these I used them all except for the Nikon Series One.

With the exception of the bird photographs, all of my photographs could have been taken with small mirror-less or SLR camera. With the amount of walking we did a small camera outfit is possibly the way to go and while a camera like the Leica is idea if you can put up with manual focusl, the cost of such an outfit is outside the range of many photographers and many people today like autofocus. If I had to buy a single camera after this trip then something like the Fuji X100s or the Fuji X Pro1 would be top of my list. If you shoot wildlife then there really is no choice but an SLR.

So in my opinion for your next holiday pack a Fuji X100s but if your into your wildlife you will need your big heavy SLR.

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