In the pink

Well. That was an exciting day.

I've been thinking seriously about moving to mirrorless gear for a year now, and for the last few months I've been teetering on the brink of going for it, without quite tipping over the edge. Today though I woke to a flurry of emails about Canon's Black Friday deals, and when I laid these on top of their existing winter cashback offers, the decision was finally made. I don't suffer from Gear Acquisition Syndrome, and I avoid Black Friday like the Black Death, but.... given that I was looking for a final push to get me to make this move anyway, it would have been almost rude, I felt, to ignore today's prompt.

Having decided, it took me less than five minutes on the Wex web site to order an R5, a 100-500 L zoom and a 50mm prime. It then took me (I kid you not) a further six hours to choose and order two fast memory cards for the new set-up. In consequence, these are due to arrive the day after the camera and lenses - but that will at least give me plenty of time to read the manual. Because I always read the manual. Obviously.

During all of this I was keeping a baleful eye on the rain and deep gloom outside my study window, and clinging to the hope that at some stage daylight would arrive, and it would stop heaving down. Neither of these things happened, and in the end I was forced to splash across the patio in the dark, and point the 5DIV vaguely in the direction of a couple of flowers, trusting the autofocus to do its thing. In the circumstances I'm relieved that this isn't worse, but a glance at the EXIF will show you that I'm not exaggerating about the conditions. I had to stack three frames to achieve even this level of focus, and then beat the whole ensemble half to death in Topaz Sharpen AI.

(I regularly run across old-school photographers who complain that these days it's all about the technology, and I do take their point, in a way, but then I ask myself: What would Ansel Adams do? And my answer is: Well, firstly he wouldn't be stupid enough to try to take photos in these conditions, but then, if pushed to it, I think he'd grab the available technology with both hands and get stuck in.)

Late this afternoon there was a second brief hiatus in the memory card research and comparison marathon, when R and I had to aquaplane off to our GP's surgery to receive Covid and 'flu boosters. Our appointments were some distance apart and we were prepared for the whole process to take quite a while, but in the event the staff were whipping through the vaccinations with such cheerful efficiency that we were both jabbed and back in the car within ten minutes. As ever, I'm very grateful to the NHS.