15Bit wrote:
Very nice Ilya - that 1D4 really works for you. I notice it could be coming up for 5 mins of sensor cleaning though
If you mean the specks below the rostrum on the 1st photo, these are birds. I did clear a fair amount of dust blots from the first two pics though, and may not have nabbed all of them. At these large apertures (f/4~f/5.6) they are fairly diffuse. Long live the auto sensor cleaning, it's been a lifesaver ever since I got this camera.
A few more Mayday photos to get that stuff out of the way and proceed to the pictures of the Central Asian trip. http://cs630825.vk.me/v630825358/2de28/IiQSSQEsF0U.jpg
Most of the city districts had some kind of animated fun going on. http://cs630825.vk.me/v630825358/2de3a/rtapNO5wj7o.jpg
LDPR party had their very own Segway parade. http://cs630825.vk.me/v630825358/2de43/-JUlylXHqGw.jpg
"Actually, these are the masks of Mr. Bush, but they were sold to us as the masks of Zhirinovsky" (true story, overheard on the Mayday parade). Zhirinovsky is the leader of LDPR; for the uninitiated, he's like a cross between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson of sorts. http://cs630825.vk.me/v630825358/2de4c/AflK2h2k-GQ.jpg
Interestingly enough, I was practically "streaming" the photos off the camera and into the office, as they were running live coverage of the event (text and photos). I was able to do this without a Wi-Fi addon (costly and cumbersome) by connecting the camera to the smartphone using a bundled USB cable plugged into a USB-OTG reverse adapter. I'm using the DSLRDashboard utility that allows for instant transfer and sharing (among other things like remotely controlling the tethered camera), and so I was sending web-sized images through the cell. Don't ask me how much of my monthly Internet allowance has been spent that day - believe me, I don't wanna know that myself!
The Wi-Fi solution would've been a little more elegant: no wires to connect the camera and interfere with the shooting; besides, constant usage was draining the smartphone battery like crazy, and since it only has one USB slot, I couldn't connect it to the camera and the portable battery at the same time. But the WiFi unit is very expensive, and I would not be able to justify it.
On the previous similar outings I was using another method - I kept taking out the MicroSD card from the camera and inserting it into the phone for transfers, but this method had a few potential caveats like the danger of dropping/losing the tiny card, or missing a shot while there was no storage medium in the camera. And since the Mayday parade is constantly on the move, I decided against this in the end.
I hope my experience may help someone who is only getting into this kind of shooting. I'm fairly sure that those who are already immersed can really teach ME a thing or two instead.
Norwegian National Day today (17th May). For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to experience one of these first hand, it is truly an amazing thing to witness - 10's of thousands of people dressed smartly in national dress. And flags everywhere. It's quite humbling really, and is a striking reminder of what the word "Nationalism" is supposed to mean - a simple pride in your national identity, history and customs.
This year though, we decided to skip the parades and the (truly epic) crowds in the town centre and head to the local hills, so that rather than doing this....
Four more from the kayak, this day I chose the 1DX over the 5DSR in anticipation of some more action/flying ducks. None of that happened so here are some floating ducks and a sandpiper.
This is a 15 image HDR, 3 brackets each, pano 
