Holidaying in Northumberland - no rest for a dog.....

We've just got back from a lovely week spent (mostly) on the beaches of Northumbria.  Quiff and Twiggy, whilst not appreciating the long car journey to get there, love playing in the sand.  Twiggy especially has a taste for running - probably from her days on the track.  Anyway the camera gear always comes along with us and I thought I'd try my hand at some very different beach shots.  Part way through the shoot I was worried that the coast guard might turn up and ask me who i was signally out to sea as I had the flash gun off camera and set up to shoot Quiff at least an hour or two after the sun had set.

Throughout the shoot I was using my Canon wireless flash system in manual mode.  The real trick to the image below is the use of a Mag Light which basically takes a normal flash and turns it into a spot light which is fantastic piece of kit.

For those of you who are interested this was shot at f2.8 at 1/160 of a second at ISO 800 on my Canon 1DX mk II using my go to 7-200 L Mk II lens (which is my favorite). 

Another shot from the same shoot:

This time F4.0 at 1/200 of a second at ISO 4000 - there's a little bit of grain popping in but none of my previous cameras would have coped with the lack of light.

What lessons did I learn from the shoot? 

1  Next time take the tripod and remote shutter release - too many of the shots were blurry because of low light camera shake - without wanting to push the ISO up to high and with the aperture wide open the only place I had to go was slower shutter speed.  I could have moved the flash closer but that would have spoiled the spot light effect.  A tripod and remote shutter release (or using a timed release) would have eliminated all camera shake.

2  Make sure you get your camera gear regularly serviced.  The gear is all going to go back to canon for its annual service as I noticed as the holiday progressed the auto focus was struggling on different lenses at different focal ranges.

3  Always have your camera on you and don't be afraid to try new things.  You might just be surprised at what you can create

4  Finally have a very patient model who doesn't mind sitting for minutes at a time whilst you fiddle around with camera settings in very low light.  Quiff is that dog - he is a very good model and my little buddy.