I’m the kind of person who often sees opportunities rather than problems. The theft of my gear in Valencia was such a moment where I didn’t loose to much time feeling sorry for myself. I could have replaced the gear with the same or similar stuff (and that would have been the cheapest option). For some pieces of equipment (like the 50mm 1.4, 24-70 and Pocketwizards) upgrading would have been silly or impossible but for other pieces the time was right to see if we could turn the set back into a good time for some upgrades. A new camera body was scheduled for 2009 but in these circumstances I had to check out the options a bit sooner.

After hearing my stuff had disappeared, fellow photographers Willem en Marijke offered me their 1Ds mkII for a good price. It became clear that this camera would fit my demands:

- sturdy and weatherproof
- plenty of image quality and size for most commercial jobs
- lots of ways to personalise the settings
- good addition to my existing gear

I worked with this camera before (I rented it when I needed the extra pixels) and I also worked with the similar 1D mkII but I got so used to my 1D mkIII that I had to get used to the mkII’s again. The interface and controls are completely different. To get the mkII reflexes back, I took the new camera with me to Austria to play around a bit.

Not only the controls are different. Shooting with a full frame camera is different too. The hugeand bright viewfinder makes work a lot more fun.

The 24-70 becomes a real wide angle when zoomed out. I even had my own shadow in the frame.

The difference in depth-of-field is something I also have to get used to. With my 1.6 and 1.3 crop bodies, I know from expirience which aperture I have to dial in to get the look I want. But I’m sure, I’ll get it right on FF too.

I really wanted to test the 1Ds mkII as a portrait camera. Usually I don’t need 16 megapixels for portraits but in some cases they can come in handy. During a walk, we came by a messy little farm that offered endless nice abstract backgrounds. Maya is always up for some posing. Nice to have such a model at home.

Kobe isn’t much of a poser but I like the light and the background so much that I HAD to make a picture. He doesn’t seems too happy being the subject but I can’t help but thinking “Damned he grows way too fast. Where’s that little boy?”.

I’m under the impression (very scientific) that my 1D mkIII has a bit less noise in the high iso’s (certainly if the RAW is underexposed). But the 1Ds mkII noise looks more like film grain.

When my dad and Kobe went out for some snowfun in a blizzard, I doubted for a second if I would follow them with a camera. But the weatherproofing is one of the reasons why I invest in 1D-series camera’s. I don’t want to be stopped by bad weather. On the contrary, I want to use bad weather to create nice images.

The camera got wet in a second from the melting snow. But, as hoped, the camera had no problems with it.

Kobe decided to test if he was snow proof himself.

Then he went on to test if his grandfather is snow proof.

From up close, a good snowball hit, looks like this:

And this is the place we stayed.

In the mean time I did some jobs with the camera and I’m really glad with my investment.