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As soon as I came
out from the car, I was stunned by how cold the temperature was.
There were nearly -20 Celsius degrees! After a short walk in the
snow, we stopped near the trail. Luigi's hairs were literally frozen
and my hands were already painfully cold. At that time I was using
the Canon 350D and my longest lens was the Sigma 180 Macro...the
350D, as the new 400D, is a very small camera and it is impossible
to use it with heavy gloves, so I had to photograph without any
protection on my hand - what an experience!
The equipment was well out of its
"operative range" - Canon states the operative environment
of the 350D is from 0 to 45° Celsius, and we were at -20°, but I
was glad to see that both camera and lens worked perfectly. There
were mainly two difficulties, other than the already mentioned
dimensions of the camera. It was extremely easy to fog the
viewfinder, since at this temperature every breathe quickly created
small droplets on the cameras. Other than that, it was not easy to
focus on the fast moving birds with my Sigma 180 Macro - even though
it has an HSM (ultrasonic) motor, the AF is very slow.
The distance from the subject was not a
problem. The woods near Pontresina have become famous for their
easyly approchable wildlife: you can photograph a great variety of
birds (Coal Tits, Crested Tits, Great Tits, etc.) and other animals
without hides or camounflagings, you just need few seeds or peanuts
to attract many friendly animals. The birds of this area have become
used to people that bring them food and they are unbelievably
"tame" - they even take food from yours hands: in this
photo, a couple of Coal Tits are landing on the hand of my fiend
Luigi to take few peanuts. I've choosen a wide aperture (f/5.6) to
get enough shutter speed to froze the motion, and to get a pleasing
background (here, the background is out of focus snow). I selected
the center AF area and I toke some burst of 3-4 shots every time
that a tit landed on Luigi's hand, trying to place the AF point on
the eye of the subject.
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