Daily Inspiration #184 by Jan Van Der Voort

Hi Steve,

As I live and work in Johannesburg, South Africa as production manager in a Tiffany & Co. owned diamond polishing factory, I decided to let my children come over from Belgium (way too cold for me to consider going there for the festive season) and organize a trip to Cape Town, the wine region and the garden route. To our surprise we discovered a Belgian restaurant in the heart of the Alfred & Victoria Waterfront, the most popular area in town. They even offered my favorite Belgian beer, the Westmalle Trappist! A real treat after all these months of locally brewed pilsner beers…

I didn’t want to arrive there too packed so I only took my Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm f/1.2 L and 16-35mm f/2.8 L II. No flash, I just hate the results. All three pics were taken with the 50mm wide open at 1/40s. ISO settings (automatic) varied from 640 (son inside restaurant) to 1250 (daughter+son outside) and 3200 (Table Mountain). Personally, I have no problems with the yellowish tint from the automatic white balance setting. I find accurate focusing with the narrow depth of field at f/1.2 challenging. Most of the time I only activate the centre focusing point and reframe after focusing, but even then the focusing area seems sometimes too large for 100% accuracy. You get the best results from using manual liveview mode and enlarging the area you want to be in focus. Unfortunately this takes some time, in most cases too much time… I probably should buy a more appropriate focusing screen.

I have some more pictures on http://gallery.me.com/janvandervoort#100443. Another favorite lens for me is the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS. If ever it gets an upgrade (100-500?), slightly brighter and closer focusing, I am buying it. Leica is no option here ;-).