Before
After
Santa brought my Christmas present a little early this year. It is a Canon EOS M, Canon’s nod to the mirrorless phenomena. What I love about the camera is that it weighs practically nothing and I can walk around all day without getting a neck ache from carrying the 5 lb monster around my neck. Since the EOS M has the same sensor as my 7D it also offers equivalent image quality. What I dislike about the camera is the limited number of lenses available and while I did purchase the adapter to use my existing lenses I found the result cumbersome at best. There is a reason Canon included a removable tripod mount on the adapter as it is nearly impossible to hold the small camera with an overbearing lens and still select a focusing point and manage exposure settings from the touch screen. That said, as soon as Canon offers a telephoto zoom lens in the M format I will be all over it and this will become my go to camera for travel and general wandering around.
So, I was chomping at the bit to test the new camera while temperatures hovered in the single digits and teens this week. When the temperature finally climbed into the 20s I was out the door wandering around the neighborhood looking for something interesting to shoot. The most interesting thing I found was these icicles hanging from the overhead sidewalk canopy outside the Southside library. I included the top of the tree as a counterpoint in the composition. Unfortunately after playing with the camera inside I forgot to reset the ISO back down from 3200 so one of the first things I had to do was apply a noise reduction filter. I also cropped and rotated to get rid of the shadows at the top. I adjusted the exposure a little using levels and then it was into Nik Color Efex Pro. I experimented with solarization filters which gave some interesting looks but decided against them and went on to add a couple of bi color filters to add some visual interest. By the time I was done it was a little too garish for my taste so I added a pastel filter to tone things down.