Month: December 2014

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Photo of the Month – December

IMG_0170.JPGApple iPhone 6
Apple 4.15mm f/2.2 
4.15mm, 1/500 Sec at f/2.2, ISO32
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom V5.7
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.10.1

My photographs of the months have been from a variety of equipment over the last year, from Hasselblad, Nikon, Leica, but over Christmas we went for a winters walk round some of the local villages, like many people whilst I had no camera with me I did have a modern smart phone.  At several points during the walk I just grabbed my phone and held it above the hedges and took quick snaps.  I would not call any of these high art but its surprising what you can to do today with phone, so for my last picture of the month of 2014 here is a quick snap from my phone.

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Building PC’s

Macbook Air in profile -closedBack in the good old days of 386 and 486 processors, I got into building my own PC’s.  This continued up to the point where I got my first Mac and since then I have always had Mac’s.

I keep thinking about a home media server and also a friend recently has been asking me about building a server to run some virtual machines on for training.  So with this in mind I spend a few hours recently looking a component prices, also to compare I looked at the PC World prices.

Unless your after something specific, looking at prices today its very difficult to justify building your own machines, and also the more I looked the more tempted I was with the thought of buying an old refurbished MacMini.

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A quiet Christmas

IMG_0170.JPG
Christmas is now over and it’s been a pleasant and quiet time.

Christmas Eve we had the day to ourselves while for Christmas Day we invited our parents over.

Boxing Day was a trip over to Chesterfield where we had a big family get together. That evening the snow started to come down and it was a cautious drive home.

Saturday morning we awoke early to a snow covered village. Even though it was our Christmas holiday we still had to get up early to let the chickens out and give them fresh water and food. While I was doing that Caroline made a pot of Oolong in her new cast iron Chinese tea pot.

We then jumped back into our warm bed to get warm and enjoy our tea.

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Hi Fi and Convenience

I love listening to music, I also loving playing music (badly, but I enjoy it), I have a very nice separates Hifi system but with having to de-clutter to help sell the old house, it was in storage for over a year, and since we moved house, its been sat in boxes while we finish (well start) decorating the end room that will be the library and where the Hifi will be set up.

So for several years now the nearest I have come to listening to good music is whats on my iPhone or listening to music coming out of my basic computer speakers.  In other words, hardly Hifi.

So for a joint birthday and Christmas present I asked for and got a Sonos speaker.  Now there are lots of wireless speaker systems now on the market, but after reading up on the different systems and more importantly listening to some, (Sonos, Bose and B&W being the top three), I decided on the Sonos.

Their basic Sonos Play1 has excellent sound quality for the price and while others sounded better you had to pay a lot more.  There is also the fact that this will be for convenience listening, most of the time this will be sat in the kitchen while we listen to the radio streamed to it.

So far I am really happy with it and can see why people like their Sonos.  For easy listening it gives a good performance and only if fed a more complex base line, does the base start to become muddy and indistinct.

Its made me think now about music for my office, do I add another Sono speaker or maybe  something like a pair of powered speakers such as a pair of Audioengine A5+, at a later date you could upgrade them with a nice separate DAC such as the ARCAM irDAC and bring my office up to a decent budget Hifi level a lot cheaper then another Sonos.

Something to think about, but until then we have the Sonos and a room that now is stripped to bare walls and a concrete floor.  All doors and windows have been replaced and we have french doors leading out onto the rear patio so its going to a lovely room when finished and our next major project on the house now we have the vegetable garden in place and our hens.

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The Night Before Christmas

On the Biking Blog “Ride it like you stole it!” which is sadly no more by Dave Dragon, there was a poem “The Biker’s Night Before Christmas”.

I have posted this before but as it is Christmas Eve I thought I was worth posting again.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the pad,

There was nada happenin’, now that’s pretty bad.

The woodstove was hung up in that stocking routine,

In hopes that the Fat Boy would soon make the scene.

With our stomachs packed with tacos and beer,

My girl and I crashed on the couch for some cheer.

When out in the yard there arose such a racket,

I ran for the door and pulled on my jacket.

I saw a large bro’ on a ’56 Pan

Wearin’ black leathers, a cap, and boots (cool biker, man).

He hauled up the bars on that bikeful of sacks,

And that Pan hit the roof like it was running on tracks.

I couldn’t help gawking, the old guy had class.

But I had to go in — I was freezing my ass.

Down through the stovepipe he fell with a crash,

And out of the stove he came dragging his stash.

With a smile and some glee he passed out the loot,

A new jacket for her and some parts for my scoot.

He patted her fanny and shook my right hand,

Spun on his heel and up the stovepipe he ran.

From up on the roof came a great deal of thunder,

As that massive V-twin ripped the silence asunder.

With beard in the wind, he roared off in the night,

Shouting, “Have a cool Yule, and to all a good ride!”

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Its Christmas

Leica Summicron 35mm
Leica Summicron 35mm

Its approaching the end of another year, and I am likely to do a recap closer to new year then today but I thought I would have a dig through my photographic archive looking for a Christmas themed photograph, and what better then a picture of the lovely Amy.

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Party Cameras

The Christmas party season is well upon us and as well as the questions; what are we going to wear, and who will be the designated driver, the other big question is, what camera will we take?

Parties now are also social media events, with people posting photographs on to there favourite social media site. It’s because of this and because we always have them with us, that the smart phone has become the most used camera.

With more then good enough quality for the web and Internet connectivity it make the obvious choice.

Personally I take a small Mirrorless as well, usually my Leica or Nikon V1, occasionally a moment occurred when you wish you had a better camera.

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Screen Differences

Profiling and TrendingChris and myself both posted some images from our weekend wildlife shoot.  It was interesting that while most of our shots looked fine on our own colour calibrated monitors, the office laptop made my photographs look over exposed and Chris’s photographs underexposed.  Now while maybe neither of is was spot on with our exposures, they certainly were nothing like as bad as they looked on these office laptops.

The difference being of course that both myself and Chris operate colour calibrated and profiled work flows and that includes profiling our screens.

The office laptops are not and it really shows.  It also goes to show how ridiculous it is to judge cameras from low quality jpegs posted on the internet.  If a camera is tempting you, try it in your hand and take a memory card to shoot a few test shots to process in your own work flow and see how they hold up.

It also highlights how you should also not judge exposure from the LCD on the back of the camera, they are certainly not profiled and what looks good is generally not the best for actual image quality.

https://brown-family.org.uk/profiles-screen/

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Wildlife Camera Choice – Mirrorless question

OM-D E-M10So the other day I went out shooting birds with the typical setup most photographers would choose.

DSLR, long lens and a tripod (or monopod).

Chris had his high end Mirrorless system, so the question some may ask is, which was best?

Well it’s a slightly more complex question then you might think, and it’s less of which is best, but more about which is more suitable.

A few years a go I would have said that an SLR is the only way to go.  Mirrorless cameras were just too slow to focus, but then the Nikon V1 with its on chip focusing sensors appeared and the game changed.

Now the high end Fuji X-T1 and Olympus OM-D E-M1 are knocking on the door of the midrange SLR’s, and in some areas are surpassing the high-end SLR’s with some of their focusing modes and especially with the Olympus its in body five-axis image stabilisation.

D4 Card SlotsWhile a Canon D1X or Nikon D4s may still have the upper hand its far less cut and dried then it was a few years ago.

The ‘bigger’ thing to consider is actually the smaller sensor, and while many complain about the ‘lack’ of ‘full frame’ no selective depth of field and poor Bokeh etc, having a smaller sensor brings a number of advantages to the game, and its these advantages that cause Nikon D300s users to complain about the lack of a new model.

A smaller sensor gives you longer reach, lower cost long glass and size and weight advantages.

While if your parking up and only having to lug a full frame SLR and long lens a few hundred meter’s its one thing, but another matter if your having to hike a long distance.

So in answer to the question which is best, as always in photography the real question is what do you want to do.

Birds in flight, complex movement, well the traditional DSLR still has the advantage, but you need to hike ten miles with a 600mm lens to get to a spot to photograph a puffin coming out of its burrow, a smaller sensor allowing a smaller lighter camera and smaller lighter lens would definitely be my choice.

Puffins
Puffins on Shetland Islands, Nikon D200, DX 1.5 crop with 1.7 teleconverter and 300mm f/2.8