First landscapes with 30D

Went out this weekend as the rain has finally passed. In fact, it was a beautifully clear, still, crisp (read 'cold') winters day.


Took the family to one of my favorite spots to photograph - Lake Mahinapua, in South Westland (West Coast of New Zealand). It's a beautiful place to photograph early morning or late evening - and we managed to get there late afternoon.

Used the D30 with the 17-55mm f2.8, on f8 (mostly), and it performed faultlessly. Met up with another photographer shooting there - David Wall from Dunedin (hi David) and his family, and we swapped Canon stories. He was using the 1D Mark II with a 24-105mm f4'L', the lens I was considering had I not opted for the 17-55mm f2.8.

Anyway, took lots of photos, but the above image of the lake in the late afternoon light was one of my favorites. I like the richness in the water, bleeding out to the lightness in the sky. I'm finding the 30D's exposures to be pretty reliable first up, and I'm not having to compensate too often (using overall metering).


Later we drove back through Hokitika as the sun was setting. The colours were glorious down by the beach and I saw this shot of a series of Cabbage Trees silhouetted against the setting sun. Just had to stop and shoot this as well (as the family stayed warm in the car with the heater turned up to full).

Even in almost pitch dark, the 30D locked on focus almost every time, which was pretty impressive. It was a lot darker than the above photo gives credit for - the exposure was around 8 seconds! And the resulting file at ISO 100 is pretty clean and noise free.

All-in-all I arrived home very happy with the images I had taken. I'm enjoying using the 30D every time I take it out of the bag and look forward to my next photographic expedition.

I've also had a macro lens arrive that I haven't really tried out yet (there's some hoar frost around that may help with that), and I've recently installed Adobe's Lightroom for all my RAW processing. More on that later as well.

And one last thing! Yervant & Joe Buissink are giving a one day seminar on Wedding Photography here in New Zealand in September! Yahooo!!! I'm there! Can't wait, and will definitely report back on that.

Life is good.