Slightly belated new years wishes to you. I hope you had the opportunity to enjoy the festivities and got to take photos along the way.

For me, Christmas was very much a family and friends affair which meant it was a great chance to spend some time getting to know my 5D.  I managed to shoot  approximately 1,500 frames mostly indoors and under mixed lighting conditions which in itself provided a challenge when it came to post processing and correcting colour casts of varying types.  Still, it’s good experience and converting some into black & white makes the problem go away quite easily.

Gatherings of people being festive often provides an excellent opportunity to catch a wide range of expressions and emotions especially when there are babies and toddlers involved.  In order to cause the least amount of disruption, I relied on ambient light and shot mostly at ISO 800/1600, wide open with 50mm f/1.4 and 24-70L f/2.8 Canon lenses.  The 24-70L is what I got to replace the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 which was my preferred walkabout lens for a cropped sensor body and although it’s not equipped with IS it’s shown itself to be an excellent lens that provides fantastic image quality over a very useful focal length range.  I still think Canon are sorely missing something like a EF 17-85 L f/2.8 IS USM lens in their line-up, though.

The EF 50mm f/1.4 is also a cracking lens for low light conditions that can be tricky to use with its very shallow depth of field, but when I got the focus right it produced some shots that distinguished themselves well.  That said, it’s not the sharpest lens I’ve used and there were times when I would have liked a bit more depth of field, but it’s still a very likeable lens.

Unfortunately, I was struck down with the flu that seems to be sweeping across the country just before Christmas and so haven’t been able to spend enough time outdoors for a proper shoot with my new kit.  So I’m still itching to get back over to the Wirral to get take some more landscapes.  The West Kirby Marine Lake webcam was showing a gorgeous sunset earlier today and the sky was mostly clear with some interesting cloud formations.  Hopefully, some of the photographers I spotted through the cam will post their shots onto the Wirral Flickr group so I can see if it was as good as I thought it looked.

If the people who bought some of my prints from RedBubble recently are reading this – thank you! :O)  Hopefully, I’ll be able to add some new images to my collection soon.