Capture The Moment

Wallington Hall, the QE II - and a Canon 7D

Thanks – as usual – to my buddy Mark Mowbray, today I visited Wallington Hall, a National Trust property about 12 miles west of Morpeth.

We’d been drawn to it by talk of a great feeding station that routinely attracts Bramblings, among other birds, and – Mark’s specific interest today – Red Squirrels.

What we found didn’t match expectations: the feeding station was dark and relatively far from the hide; the hide windows were frozen shut; and the feeders were completely empty!

Not a great situation: there were birds around – quite a few tits (mainly Coal, with Blue and Great in support), Robins, Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Nuthatches – and a Moorhen. That was it – no Winter thrushes, no Bramblings.

The birds were too far off and in awful light, so – as experiences go – it wasn’t a good one, and surely not the place to test my new Canon 7D!

Shame too, because (feeding station apart!) the light today has been glorious – beautiful Winter Sun being bounced around by the generous covering of snow over this part of Northumberland…

Hope springs eternal, however, so we had a potter around the rest of the estate and – in the Walled Garden – found some very obliging subjects in the form of friendly Robins:

Robin, Wallington Hall

Robin, Wallington Hall

Robin, Wallington Hall

Robin, Wallington Hall

Robin, Wallington Hall

Robin, Wallington Hall

And – rather strangely – a Moorhen:

Moorhen, Wallington Hall

Moorhen, Wallington Hall

Moorhen, Wallington Hall

Moorhen, Wallington Hall

Mark spotted this little lady high up in a tree: I wasn’t going to bother processing the file – honestly, it was miles away, a dot in the frame – but I’ve since worked it up and, y’know, it ain’t that bad…

Kestrel, Wallington Hall

Having “done” Wallington, we decided to call into the QEII lake on the way home so that I could test out the 7D’s new AF options on BIFs.

I failed dismally with the ducks, but that’s OK – I’m pretty sure I was using an AF mode that wasn’t suited to the task – although I did get some pretty sharp duck butts (I was too close)!

I did pick up a handful of nice Black Headed Gulls though:

Black Headed Gull, QEII Lake

Black Headed Gull, QEII Lake

Black Headed Gull, QEII Lake

About the 7D.

Files off the camera looked different to 40D RAWs – initially I thought they looked a bit softer, although I’ve since concluded that I’m wrong about that. Besides it’s a different camera. It’s important to remember this when evaluating a new camera.

So I had at ‘em anyway, using in my current favourite converter, Bibble 5.

I realised that different “capture” sharpening was needed – a higher default level (which I think makes sense) – but the files convert and process very nicely, and they do resolve a lot more fine feather detail than say, the 40D (these small web-sized shots don’t really show just how much feather detail I’m getting).

I was also very happy with how the 7D metered the snowy scenes – Evaluative worked nicely and I had no hot highlights in any images I took today.

Centre Point AF is brisk and positive and locks on very effectively – I don’t think I had a single OOF shot in this mode.

While the Auto Select All Points mode was great fun (you see the AF points follow the subject around the viewfinder) I didn’t get many impressively sharp images with the gulls and ducks at the QEII. I’m confident that I can improve on that though – and if not, I can always use Centre Point AF with AF Point Expansion mode, which is evidently excellent for flying birds.

At one point I was shooting a Rook flying past. It went behind a tree, and the AF tracked it perfectly, keeping focus on the bird even behind the twigs and branches: that was hugely impressive.

I used 400 ISO for most of my images today (higher ISO testing can wait until I’ve got used to the camera) and at 400, files are very clean.

Biiiiig files, though! Jpegs converted from the RAWs and saved at 100% are averaging 25 mb!

Finally, the LCD: what the hell is all the fuss about with these high-res LCDs? I’m just as happy looking at the LCD on the 40D, to be honest.

All in all then, I’m pretty pleased with how this first outing went: there’s a lot still to learn about the 7D, and I’m looking forward to pointing it at some waders.