The end of an era - Part I

On a beach in Florida

I've used Canon cameras for as long as I can remember, all the way back into the days of film. I first bought an SLR in 1997 I think, a Canon EOS 500n. I graduated from that to Canon EOS 5. I spent three months in Australia in 1998 with that camera and it was just terrific, with five focus points, a real upgrade! And as a pointless fun fun gimmick they could be controlled by eye! From there I moved to a pair of Canon EOS 1N. I remember climbing Ben Nevis with both of them, one loaded with colour slide film, the other with black and white. Ludicrous when you think about it. I never got into darkroom stuff, I just paid silly money to Fuji to have them do it. I found them the other day, boxes and boxes of slides - Velvia and Sensia mostly, though you would have to be fairly ancient to remember what those names even meant. I am and I do!

My first foray into digital was also years ago. Mrs L and I had a point and click digital camera for a while in the early 2000s. I have no idea what it was, and I don't think we were especially early adopters, but I remember it being novel and fun. I also remember Mrs L dropping it on a rock during a canoing trip in France and cracking it open. My first entry into digital SLRs some time later was a Canon EOS D30, with three whole megapixels and three focus points! It was wonderful, or I thought so at the time. Mrs L broke that one too, cracked the screen against the seat rails of the car one day. Sad times. The next camera I can remember was an EOS 50D, my first properly capable DSLR. I didn't let Mrs L near it! This came out in August 2008 and I think I bought one pretty soon afterwards. It had nine (count 'em!) focus points. Nine! Some of the first photos from this blog in February 2009 were taken with it, and by that time I was beginning to invest in some swanky glass as well - the first EF version of Canon's fabled 70-200mm f2.8 series of lenses. I also had a 28-70mm f2.8 that I had bought at B&H PhotoVideo in New York in around 2007, at that time the most expensive single item I had ever bought at around $800.

By late 2009 I'd stepped up a gear and was using a second-hand 1D Mark II, an older camera than the 50D, but far far better, and from then on that was all I used. I upgraded through every iteration of the 1D until the 1DX which I bought in 2018 and have been using ever since, with the 1D Mark IV as my backup. The lenses improved too. My first birding lens was the non IS version of the 300 f4. I remember buying it at Jessops on Tottenham Court Road when that still existed. I then flip-flopped endlessly between between the image-stablised version of that lens and the non-stablisiled 400mm f5.6, and at some point I capitulated and bought myself a 300mm f2.8 which I used with converters.

But all of these purchases were leading up to just one thing. A Canon 500mm f4. I succumbed in April 2010. Initially my pictures were much worse, I simply did not know how to handle it. Over time I got the hang of it though and I've never looked back. Whilst I sold it in 2012 and moved to the peerless 800mm f5.6, it wasn't long before I bought the new Canon 500mm f4 mkII, nearly 1kg lighter than the prior version and with much better stabilisation and optics. I've been using both of these lenses for over a decade, almost every bird photo on here or anywhere else was taken with one of those two lenses, most probably the 500mm as it was the one I always picked up due to it being so much lighter. For dedicated photography trips with small birds the 800mm came along, for anything else including more general travel it was the 500mm. I loved that lens. 

Here is my 500mm on the day I got. Brand new! It didn't look like this when I packed it up!

Earlier this week however I packed it up in its big grey suitcase and a van came and picked it up. It also picked up my trusty 1DX, both converters, and my one remaining non-birding lens, a Canon 24-105mm f4. Two weeks before that the same thing has happened with the 800mm. Goodbye Canon, it's been great. A sad day and the end of an era. But time marches on, and I don't mean just mean the technology, I also mean me!

When I first started carrying these lenses around I was 34 years old and I barely felt them. When the new 500mm came out, weighing a mere 3.1kg vs the 4.5kg of the 800mm, it felt like a toy. In conjunction with a 1D body the whole lot weighed over 5kg and yet I would happily walk around all day with it dangling off my shoulder. It travelled the world with me, but on more recent trips it's begun to feel heavier. Too heavy. At the same time I cannot help but notice that the technology has moved on. In Singapore earlier this year, a place where almost nobody is a birder yet everyone is a photographer, people I saw were carrying the most comparatively dinky cameras and yet achieving astonishing results. My birding buddies on Wanstead Flats had also moved onwards and upwards, with a slew of lovely mirrorless Canon setups weighing a fraction of what I was carrying, assuming I was carrying anything that is. 

The final straw came a few weeks ago when I went to Mexico with Mick. As usual I had dragged along the 1DX with the 500mm, but he had a shiny new toy, an Olympus OM1 system with an astonishingly small and lightweight lens that in fact magnified more than mine. He happily carried this all day, whereas half the time my camera stayed in the car. Too heavy, too awkward, plus a bit of professional jealousy! Previously I'd been happy to bird with it but now it felt like a drag, a literal weight on my shoulder. We talked about what I should do a fair bit, the pros and the cons, the alternatives and so on, and by the time I got home my mind was made up. I sold the 800mm two days later. What an astonishing optical marvel that was, but fewer and fewer places were servicing it which could be an expensive problem in the future, and I also knew that if the 500mm was now too heavy for my liking the chances of me ever picking up a lens that weighed +50% again were next to nil. I'd rather not talk about the money I got back on it if you don't mind.....  Suffice it to say that photographers are essentially walking pots of money as far as camera businesses are concerned.

This was my full birding trip bag. It weighed around 17kg.

But what will replace my beloved Canon gear? In truth I don't know yet, but I'll cover my thoughts in the next post as I have blathered on for far too long today already.