Saturday 22 January 2011

Watching The Sun Rise .... Portland Bill, Dorset

Although the circumstances of our recent trip to Dorset was not what you would wish for (funeral of a close and much loved Uncle on my wife's side of the family), staying overnight and being a natural early riser gave me the opportunity to head down from Dorchester to Portland Bill to watch the sun rise.


Actually I was about 30 minutes too late for the true sunrise, but by luck a strip of cloud hid the sun and so as I arrived the first few rays of sunlight began to peek out, so no time to mess about - find the best spot and set up quickly!  Still, very pleased with the results.

This was the first outing for my new Canon EOS 7D so interested to see how the results looked.  Overall I'm very pleased though I have to say that as others have reported, if you 'pixel peep' the images there is a bit more noise than perhaps you would expect to see at ISO 100, most notably in the darker areas.  However, a quick tweak in Lightroom 3 and it's gone without any noticeable detriment to image quality.  Not much else to say at this stage really; I did play with the focus tracking with the birds as they flew around, and this seemed to work very well (another source of criticism in the forums) so I think anyone having focus issues with a 7D is probably falling foul of the complexities of setting it up.

Finally, a quick word of thanks and recommendation for the Aquila Heights Guest House, Maiden Castle Road, Dorchester.  They could not do enough for us to make the circumstances of our trip easier; they made sure the rooms were ready ahead of time so we could freshen up after the drive from Birmingham before the funeral service, and they even served me a full breakfast way after the allotted time after my trip to Portland Bill (I hadn’t realised how much building work was going on down there ahead of the Olympics!  It looked like they were moving Weymouth!!)  With comfy rooms and all the amenities you’ll need (even a midnight snack bar!), it’s highly recommended.