CCC Forum

Day 57 and the first daffodils have made it into the house. It might not feel like it, but is a positive sign that spring is not too far off.

Canon EOS 7D
EF 100 f/2.8 macro
0.8 sec
f/13
ISO 100
Tripod

This is great, I had something similar in mind when my wife brought some daffodils home last week. Though as ours are all dead I might need to do this some other time! DOF makes this image for me.

Thanks for the feedback, Dave. This type of work can be quite fiddly to set up and get the framing correct when working at such close distances. One of the learnings which I picked up from you when we went on the Autumn Colour outing last year was to use live view when the camera is on the tripod, which does make things easier and avoids having to use mirror lockup. Until then, I was only usimg the viewfinder. Mind you, extended use of live view does really eat up the battery.

It certainly does. I bought one of these -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battery-550D-Ca ... 628&sr=8-4

which lets you have 2 batteries on the go at one time and the supplied 3rd party batteries are almost as good in terms of lifespan as the Canon official ones. I tested them using a multimeter too (well my uncle did) and they were producing the same output as the canon one so little risk of damage to the camera. Also the portrait grip itself is useful for, well, portraits. Not to mention this 3rd party one is nearly £100 cheaper than the canon official one and does the same job.

Now I set the auto-poweroff to 15 mins and don't worry about the batteries running out.

I always used to have spare batteries for my previous DSLRs, but the battery in the 7D lasts so long that I have never bothered with a spare. Since I mainly use live view at home, it is not really an issue. Even my Panasonic G3, which has quite a small battery, is good for 200 - 300 shots which is normally sufficient. That's if I remember to charge it up first, of course. Not always a given, unfortunately.