SEPTEMBER 2021 – A view straight up in a forest near St. Quirin, Bavaria, Germany. Photo © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
We did a walk up to the Neureuth Mountain Restaurant and I decided to take a good camera and some good lenses with me. I hadn’t done this in a while for a plain walk, because the equipment is quite heavy.
When I mounted my trusted Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L to the camera, the display showed the error message “ERR-01 Communications between the camera and lens is faulty. Clean the lens contacts.” The lens would not focus and simply not release the shutter. Uh. Not good.
You see, I had owned this lens since September 2005 – exactly 16 years on this day. It was the second EF lens I purchased (many others followed) and I had been totally in love with the lens, always. It’s been one of my bread-and-butter lenses, a standard that was with me on almost every shooting. The image quality had been superior from day 1 – fast focus, super sharp, excellent colors, nice results at any aperture. And now it was refusing work. It was a frustrating experience. Of course, I cleaned the lens contacts right away to no avail.
I had once a battery failure, and without a spare battery it would have been quite embarrassing to call off the wedding shoot. So I knew that it’s good to have some spare equipment because you never know when such a failure may happen. But a lens had never before failed on me.
So I unmounted the lens and opted for the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II which I rarely use because it seems just a bit too wide at its lower end, and the range of 24 to 35 mm was well covered by the 24-70 mm.
I decided to experiment with the wide angle a bit more and did this fun shot to the roof of the forest we were in. I love the straight lines that guide to the empty oval in the center of the image. Nice.
Oh, you may wonder what has happened to the 24-70mm? I sent it in to CPS for repair but got it back with a notice that there are no spare parts available for this model. I found this weird, considering there are recent videos explaining how to repair. Anyway, I decided to sell the old lens on eBay and replaced it with its newer version, the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II. Which is a very nice lens, too.
The high resolution image
| Capture Date & Time | 26-SEP-2021, 12:58 |
| Location | St. Quirin, Bavaria, Germany |
| Camera | Canon EOS-1D Mark IV |
| Lens | Canon EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM |
| ISO | 800 |
| Exposure | 1/100 sec at f/16 |
| Digital Image Source Format | Canon Camera RAW (CR2) |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 4896 x 3624 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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