My 2024 favourites - Vertical shots

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This is a separate post because I'm cross-posting to Instagram, which still doesn't support mixed aspect ratio photos in a single post for some bizarre reason!
Full size photos after the jump.

My 2024 favourites - October to December

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Of the 366 days, I posted backup photos on 61 occasions - roughly one in six posts on average.
The frequency of backup posts was variable, but trended upwards through the year.
October and November were the worst months, with 11 backups each, which coincides with me having a particularly bad time at work.

Fixer-Upper.
I fixed two slightly unhappy lenses this year.
Firstly, my EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS, which had developed a weird fault years ago, not long after being repaired following a rather ignominious fall from a bit of staging, which broke it almost in half. The fault caused the lens to fail to focus at focal lengths around 135mm, and also caused the image stabiliser to jump as you zoomed through the same point. The fault turned out to be a slightly damaged sliding contact, which was easily corrected, and has restored the lens to perfect health.
The second repair escapade was on my EF-M 22mm, which had developed a very dodgy manual focus ring. I pulled the lens apart and found that the glue that holds the external ring to the encoder had failed, so a bit of glue was called into service, and that one's back in working order too.

Shopping.
I bought quite a lot of new toys this year, which I've mostly enjoyed.
This started out with the Sigma 150-600mm and matching 1.4x teleconverter. It's not an especially sharp lens, and the image stabiliser is a bit odd, but it does deliver acceptable results if you treat it right, and it is relatively cheap for the focal length.
In February, I finally went full-frame with the 6D Mark II, something I'd wanted to do for years. This was a great buy, and it's a lovely camera to use. I really like the built in GPS, which geotags your photos automatically at source.
In terms of glass, I picked up a few lenses on the used market, which I've been very pleased with - the EF24-105mm f/4L IS, which is a good general purpose lens on full frame; the very special purpose MP-E65mm f/2.8 Macro lens, the EF100mm f/2.8 L IS, and the EF85mm f/1.2.
Getting the MP-E65mm Macro lens pushed me towards focus stacking, which led to me buying the WeMacro automatic focus rail, which is very helpful.
After doing more stacked macro work, I found myself needing a more appropriate flash setup, so I bought four Godox MF12 macro flashes to go with the Xpro wireless trigger system, which I'd bought early in the year. This system has proved to be very useful, nice to work with, and reliable so far.

I bought a Manfrotto MK055CXPRO4BHQR tripod with an XPRO ball head, which has proved to be something of a disappointment.
It's really no smaller, lighter, or stiffer than my old 055 classic aluminium tripod, and the fourth leg section is too thin and annoyingly light, so it doesn't extend or retract under its own weight. The only real benefit I've found is that it isn't as cold to the touch as an aluminium one.
The XPRO tilting column is occasionally useful, but I've used it far less than I imagined when I bought it, and having no easy height adjustment in the horizontal mode is not great. I've also been pinched by the leg locks more times than I care to remember!
I wish I'd bought the 3-section version instead, with no head - The XPRO ball head is really poor, especially when the column is horizontal, and I quickly stopped using it in favour of my old 486RC2 head.
I'm rather tempted to ditch this tripod and look for something that suits me better.

My latest acquisition is a used EOS R5. I'm enjoying it so far - it's a step up in resolution and general performance, and the mirrorless system seems to work well. The only minor downsides I've found so far are the lack of inbuilt GPS, which feels like a retrograde move compared with the 6D II, and the shorter battery life, which I was expecting - a live video system clearly requires significantly more power than a mirror!

Full size photos after the jump. 

My 2024 favourites - July to September

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My most used camera was my EOS 6D Mark II, coming in at 72% of the shots.
The M6 Mark II came in at 9%, with the 80D at 7%, the Sony RX10V at 6% - a couple of other cameras made up the balance.
No real surprises there, I bought the 6D II in mid-February, and it was my main camera thereafter, although I used the M6 II when I wanted more resolution and/or the smaller sensor for its teleconverter effect (or both in several cases!).

My most used lens was the EF70-200 f/2.8 L IS, at 32%. Absolutely no surprise there, I love this lens.
I combined the numbers for the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro and the EF100mm f/2.8 L IS Macro, because they were used for essentially the same type of work. They came in at 18%.
The EF24-105mm f/4 L IS came in at 12%, the Sigma 150-600mm at 7%, and the EF50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro at 5%.
All of my other lenses came out at least once, but I'm not going to inflict every last statistic on you!
Full size photos after the jump.

My 2024 favourites - April to June

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I took roughly 20,000 shots (according to the camera's shutter count and a bit of informed guesswork), and kept about 6000 that I thought were worth editing.
The busiest month was May, with 819 photos added to the library, and the quietest was November, at 263.

I've found that I much prefer editing in Lightroom over Canon's DPP software. Lightroom is much more powerful in terms of its editing tools, and is substantially faster to export. It also has lens correction profiles for 3rd party lenses, which DPP does not.
DPP wins massively on initial sorting for the Canon cameras' files though - its Quick Check tool is a lot faster at parsing files for an initial cull, and it's very easy to zoom in to 100% to check details.

I've settled on a combined approach now, where I download everything from the cards onto the computer, and make an initial culling pass or two with DPP, marking files I want to keep or delete.
Once I'm happy with the final selection of keepers, I import only those files into Lightroom and make my edits there.
Unless I'm missing something in Lightroom, this is a much faster and more comfortable technique than fighting with the lightroom import window (which I find rather clunky, and where I inevitably press escape by mistake, then lose all my progress!).
This approach even works, (with some adaptations) for the files from the drone and Sony RX100V. These cameras only shoot RAW+JPEG, which I was initially irritated by, but I've now realised that DPP can read the JPEGs, which I can cull, and then it's relatively easy to use those files to cull through the RAWs, before finally deleting the JPEGs and taking the selected RAWs into Lightroom.
Full size photos after the jump.

My 2024 favourites - January to March

I'm really quite proud of having kept this project going all year.

It's been hard at times, but on the whole, it feels like it's been a bit easier than last time I completed a daily photoblog, back in 2009 (and definitely easier than my failed attempt in 2011!).
The next few posts will be a few of my favourites - one set from each quarter of the year, plus a set of portrait-orientation shots, (this is just because I'm cross-posting to Instagram, which still doesn't support mixed aspect ratio photos in a single post for some bizarre reason!)
I'm going to add some thoughts and silly little stats - Some of this will be geeky, so consider yourself warned!
Full size photos after the jump.

Hello again

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Lots has happened in the more than a decade since I last posted here. In fact, more than a decade has passed since I last even started to write a draft post here, in October 2013. Tempus fugit, et cetera.
Some really good things happened in that time, and some really bad things happened too. I have experienced what are unquestionably the absolute best and worst days of my life so far within the last couple of years. I might come back to that at some point if this exercise survives long enough.
I'm going to try and get back on the photo blog horse, so to speak. I'm also going to try cross-posting on Instagram.
@bensigsworth
Let's see what happens.