G’day, welcome back to my Blog, the plan for these is to have two entries per week the mid-week one more on the gear I use and the weekend post of the shot and process for the shot I took that weekend. We’ll see how I go and how long I can keep up the content. Since is mid-week its Gear day, so let’s start with the camera I use and why.

I’m currently shotting with a Canon 60D and have had it now for around three years from memory. prior to that I was using the Canon 350D and even before that was the Minolta X-700 Film camera which only had manual focus, manual settings plus aperture and shutter priority.   

The 60D has been a fun camera and I love the swivel screen as it allows me to have the camera on the ground to give the low down prospective for the mushroom shots without me having to lie in the dirt / mud or water to get the shots. The Camera has the ability to remotely fire Flashes via infrared signal which I’ve used in the past until I recently purchased the wireless flash triggers from Yongnuo via bay, these are great as it means I no longer need the line of sight from the camera IR sensor to the flash so allows for fitting of the soft box and laying the flash down. The 60D has 18 Mega pixels which is a big step up from the 8 I had on the 350D has 5.3 frames per second and only 9 focus points, the ISO limit is 6400 but I really go over 1600 as I find too much noise starting to creep in at that limit for my liking. But I do like the camera and have had plenty of fun with it, I’m starting to find it wanting now as I get more into Bird photography with a faster frame rate and higher ISO limit with less noise being wanting to get faster shutter rates for the bird photography, also a few more focus points would be nice again for the bird shots. For the mushroom shots I take I find the 60D great and have no issues with it for these, I think it does a great job there and haven’t really wanted anything else that the camera doesn’t have, though the idea of wifi would be nice so I don’t move the camera changing the settings between shots would be nice, being able to adjust all that on an ipod touch would be really nice, I was hoping the new 7D mk2 would have that but looks like it maybe missing the Wifi guess we’ll find out in the coming weeks. If it comes with wifi then that will be really tempting, if not then I’ll be making do with the 60D for a while yet. Gives me a chance to improve my technology rather than using the technology as a crutch I guess. Easy to do, blame the gear.

One of the great features after the swivel screen is the second function wheel on the back, after the 350D this is a great feature and with the front wheel on the top and the one on the back make it so easy to shot in manual mode changing both aperture and shutter speed with the two wheels. I wouldn’t buy a DSLR without the two wheels after using them on this one.  Most of my shooting is done in Manual mode a carry on from my film days and early cameras, though I do occasionally shot in Aperture priority or shutter priority and have the custom function set up as a quick setting if I need a high speed wild life shot in a hurry, so the ISO has been bumped up to 800 the shutter speed fixed at 1/1000, so when I see something flying over an want a quick shot I turn the dial to the custom function mode and its already set up to shot. Another part of the camera I customised was the use of back button focus this separates the exposure metering, focus from the shutter release. The expose metering is at the shutter release but the back button with the star is set for focus. Not quite as critical for manual shooting as aperture priority shooting but something once your use to it is easy to handle, takes a few hours practice at first to get used to it but once you are you stay with it, besides it’s always fun seeing someone else try and use you camera after its set up and they can’t focus.

The 60D is a great camera and I’ve had plenty of shots I like and are hanging on my wall from it, unless Canon bring out a higher mega pixel camera with higher frame rate and wifi, I’ll be sticking with the 60D for a while.

More gear next week, and don’t for gets Saturdays how I got the shot post.

Thanks for dropping by.

Glenn.