If I could only bring one setup, what should I bring to take pictures of a new born grandson? I own the following cameras:

Canon 6D and the access to the following full-frame lenses
Primes 24 f2.8, 50f1.4, 85 f1.8, 100 f2.8
Zooms 12-24 f4.5-5.6, 17-40 f4 L, 24-105 f4 L, 28-75 f2.8, 70-210 f4, 28-300 f3.5-6.3, 100-300 f4.5-5.6

or 70D with access to the following APS-C lenses (or any above)
6.5 f3.5, 10-18 f4.5-5.6, 17-50 f2.8, 16-300 f3.6.3

So if you could take only one combination, what would you choose?

Went out at stupid o'clock Saturday morning in hopes of seeing a barn owl that has been reported at a nearby park... alas, no owl. But the trip wasn't a complete bust - this Cooper's hawk showed up and gave me some nice photo ops...

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http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz47/squirl035/IMG_8312%20crop%20sm.jpg

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Special U.S. and British T Force units, accompanying combat troops, were authorized to detain "scientific and industrial personalities" for interrogation after invading Thuringia and Saxony in April, 1945, although that region was designated for eventual Russian occupation.

Reportedly, the War Department thought the expertise of those Germans might be useful in the ongoing Pacific war against Japan. American and British industries, however, were more interested in learning industrial and proprietary secrets from detainees -- through coercion, if necessary.

More than 1,500 German scientific "personalities" -- all civilians -- already were being held and interrogated in Camp "Overcast" near Versailles in France. And the T Forces in Thuringia were gearing up to detain yet another 1,500 civilian scientists, including many Nazis. Concerned, General Eisenhower requested some guidelines from Washington before Russia moved in.

The TOP SECRET response was a jaw-dropper.

The U.S. armies were ordered to withdraw by July 1, 1945. And they were ordered to "rescue" the targeted scientists and their families -- willing or not -- from the Soviets before the deadline. They were to be moved en masse by rail and truck to various locations in the U.S. and British Occupation Zones.

The shocked evacuees were uprooted in the last weeks of June 1945 with very little warning. Americans from T Force and CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) appeared at their homes and presented them with this 24-hour notice in German:

"On orders of Military Government you are to report with your family and baggage as much as you can carry tomorrow Noon at 1300 Hours (22 June 1945) at the town square in (locality). There is no need to bring winter clothing. Easily carried possessions, such as family documents, jewelry, and the like should be taken along. You will be transported by motor vehicle to the nearest railway station. From there you will travel on to the West. Please tell the bearer of this letter how large your family is."

No pets or furniture allowed. Their homes were to be abandoned, as well as any vehicles, plus their libraries, files, research projects, bank accounts, pensions, tenure, etc. Some CIC men promised the evacuees that fully furnished houses were waiting for them in the U.S. Occupation Zone. Few evacuees believed them, but defiance was not an option.

The operation became known as "Overcast." There's no reliable count of the evacuees involved. The U.S. and Britain still officially assert the scientists went freely.

FIAT (Field Information Agency - Technical), a joint American-British military/civilian operation, was assigned to handle the hasty arrangements and monitor the evacuees. The scientists and their families traveled west in boxcar trains, reportedly 30 adults per car. Two children counted as one adult.

On June 21, 1945, the commanding general of the 12th Armored Division in the American Zone was ordered to prepare for 1,500 evacuees selected from 50 firms and three universities. When they arrived in Heidenheim, they were housed behind barbed wire and faced endless interrogations (both technical and political), often for months.

The largest single group (ca. 120, plus families) came from Zeiss. Within a year, the "Zeissianers" relocated to Oberkochen and were refitting empty factory buildings. By 1947 Zeiss employed 4,000. Their biggest customer: the U.S. military, which in 1945 ordered 3,400 special lenses for aerial photography.

Many other evacuees were not so lucky.

The vague plans to use German scientists to defeat Japan evaporated within six weeks, after Japan surrendered in August, 1945. Now surplus, these highly educated people were stranded. They were sidelined into small villages, provided with susistence funds, and required to check in twice weekly with FIAT and Military Government. The villagers usually despised them as outsiders.

JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) issued a directive mandating these scientists should be released "only after all interested agencies were satisfied that all desired intelligence information has been obtained from them." The "interested agencies" sometimes included peacetime competitors.

Without employment, and forbidden to return to their former homes, the detainees became non-persons. Depression and bitterness were rampant. Hope appeared eventually, for some at least. It was called Operation Paperclip. But that's another topic.
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During the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, America, Britain and Russia defined the borders of their future Occupation Zones in Germany. Whoever overran the borders during combat agreed to eventually withdraw.

On March 31, 1945, three American armies, including generals Patton and Bradley, had crossed Germany and paused before the eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony -- the Russian Occupation Zone.

But the Russians were not there -- and the Nazis were. A major concentration camp, Buchenwald, waited to be rescued, so the order to attack was given.

After routing the Nazis and freeing some 22,000 prisoners, the Americans set up 34 provisional Military Government offices throughout the 16,400 square-mile region. The Russians were busy attacking Berlin, their prime military goal.

But we had different goals in mind.

Among our combat troops were T Force personnel, eager to raid such high-tech companies as Carl Zeiss Jena, Schott Optics and Glass, Siemens and Halske, Telefunken, Junkers Aircraft, Agfa. BMW, Krupp, I. G. Farben, and others: a total of more than 50 firms. The target list came from CIOS (Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee).

T Force's orders were to expropriate any and all scientific and engineering machinery, patents, blueprints, formulae, models, prototypes, and "intellectual property" for the Office of the Alien Property Custodian in Washington (and major U.S. corporations who sent representatives to help in the selections).

However, this meant the Americans were in violation of the Yalta Conference. They were deliberately burglarizing properties belonging to the Russian Occupation Zone. Naturally, T Force was only following orders, a familiar argument in war on both sides.

Then a hidden agenda began to slowly emerge. The original intent behind the Custodian program was to prevent the Germans from ever rebuilding a war machine. But maybe German technology would help the upcoming invasion of Japan? Or maybe we could use German technology to deal with possible future Soviet aggression?

Anyway, Pentagon and State Department planners thought it unwise to hand over the Thuringian technical treasures to Russia. They decided to secretly relocate certain companies from the Russian Zone to the American Zone, for American purposes -- whether the Germans liked it or not.

Meanwhile, in Thuringia American troops found immense underground factories (the Nordhausen V-2 rocket assembly facilities) and mines full of priceless art works, gold bars, and treasures, much of it stolen from either private citizens or governments, banks and museums. We had good reason to believe the Soviets would not return those to their rightful owners, so we "liberated" everything and moved it to Munich and Frankfurt and points west. Streams of transfers began on April 14, 1945.

In mid-May, pressure on the Americans to withdraw suddenly intensified. The Russians had become edgier and demanded that all U.S. forces be out of their Zone by July 1, period.

The scramble during the next six weeks was incredible. Thousands of railcars and countless truck convoys were mobilized to move mountains of "intellectual reparations" into the American Zone, out of the reach of the Russians.

During the final week, the furious pace took on a new and darker aspect. Overnight, the T Force and Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) suddenly ordered the "evacuation" of some 1,700 prominent German scientists, engineers and technicians, plus their families, shipping them to the American Occupation Zone. Many went unwillingly but had no choice. More on that in my next vignette.

A few GIs were still in Weimar to greet the Soviet troops when they officially entered their Occupation Zone in Thuringia and Saxony on July 4, 1945.

During the Potsdam Conference a month later, a reportedly embarrassed President got an earful from a testy Stalin, when Truman heard for the first time about the massive equipment removals and forced evacuations. Truman responded that such actions were "unusual" for the American military, and he denied that the evacuations were forced.