Camera of the Year 2017

My D800 I rate as one of the most accomplished all round cameras of recent years.  I D810 was a minor update and I did not think it was worth upgrading.

At the recent Lincoln Photography Show, I got the chance to use the new Nikon D850, at it is a very different beast.  Its the best bits of the D800, together with the professional D5 and a new 45.7 MP sensor.

A number of magazines and photographic organisations are now starting to vote for camera of the year for 2017.  The top candidates are likely to be Sony, Olympus and Nikon.  I think Nikon will will, the D850 is hard to beat, high resolution rivalling medium format, as fast and responsive as the professional Nikon D5 but in a smaller and lighter body.

Boxing Day – The Family Visit

Today is Boxing Day here in the UK.

Its similar to America’s Black Friday in that the sales start.  I have heard a few reasons why it got its name; one that workers kept a box, and any tips got put into it and on the day after Christmas they would break open the box and spend the money.  The other is that it was the day servants would get they Christmas box present and sent home to have the day off with their family.

Here in the brown household we have about a dozen family members paying a visit and will have three dogs and a snake in the house today.  It will be great to see then all again and its the last day of our holiday; we are back to work tomorrow for the remainder of the week.

Merry Christmas 2017

Leica Summicron 35mm

Merry Christmas everyone.  Its likely to be a light blog week this week, we are at home for today and tomorrow with guests visiting both days but for the rest of the week we are working.

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 this is my last post before Christmas I thought it 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!”

Enjoy the Christmas Holiday, we have a little more shopping to do and family and friends coming round over the following days so no more photography until the new year, but I need to find a few spare hours as I have some final post processing to do from my last studio session.

What ever your religion or even none, enjoy the holiday.

 

Bodhi Day

December 8th – On Bodhi day some Buddhists celebrate Gautama’s attainment of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya, India.

Hanukkah

December 9th – Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights and marks the restoration of the temple by the Maccabees in 164 BCE. Hanukkah is celebrated at roughly the same time as Christmas, but there is no connection at all between the festivals.

Yule

December 21st – Yule is the time of the winter solstice, when the sun child is reborn, an image of the return of all new life born through the love of the Gods. Within the Northern Tradition Yule is regarded as the New Year.

Christmas

December 25th – The day when Western Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Oshogatsu

January 1st – Shinto New Year, one of the most popular occasions for shrine visits.

Guru Gobind Singh

January 5th – Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) was the tenth and last of the Sikh Gurus. He instituted the Five Ks and established the Order of the Khalsa.

Orthodox Christmas

January 7th – Most Orthodox churches use the Julian rather than the Gregorian version of the Western calendar. As a result, they celebrate Christmas 13 days later than other Christian churches.

Makar Sankranti

January 14th – Makar Sankranti is one of the most important festivals of the Hindu calendar and celebrates the sun’s journey into the northern hemisphere.

DxOMark results are in for the M10

Leica M8 sample – Fantasy Figure

A lot of people set great store by the DxOMark results but to be honest most camera sensors do a pretty good job now  a days and we are really spitting hairs.

The results also do not really provide a guide to image quality, and can give some odd results, like scoring medium format sensors quite low, giving sensors that use aggressive noise reduction that looses detail in images a better score then those that do not.

As expected the M10 scores well but is not up there with the best of the Canon, Nikon and Sony results, but we do have access to some of the best glass in the world that works better on a M then any other camera.

The Holidays are Coming! Gardening and DIY

The Christmas holidays are fast approaching; were working the Christmas week so this week is our holiday. The main jobs are tidying the garden, cutting down some of the more overgrown shrubs and starting the clear the bottom corner where we are planning on having our bees.

In the house we have decorated for Christmas and also done a little DIY. The house is flood wired for phone, but we do not use it as we have wireless phones at home. The wiring is old and causes interference, so I have been doing a little rewiring, so only the alarm system is still connected and the rest of the phone sockets can now all be removed when we decorate the house finally.

Shooting into the Light

When your learning about photography, you get the basic rules.

Rule of thirds, 80/20, shoot with the sun behind you, f/8 and be there. subjects should lead from left to right etc.

The quick snap above which I took on a walk with Timmy the Greyhound across the fields, breaks a few of these.  The most obvious one is that this is shot directly into the sun.

Adobe Lightroom Classic update

Adobe issued a slight update to Lightroom this week and one of the things they have tweaked is the auto button in the develop settings.

Once you have tried the old auto, you never use it again, it treated all photographs the same and was never worth using; but now Adobe have updated it to use their new AI routines and I have to admit it does and OK job and can make a useful starting point.

Mobile Work Flow and file name change

I took a few snaps in the coffee shop and decided to take a note of the file names.

As you can see above, the Leica iOS app can see the photographs on the camera and its seeing the correct file name. I downloaded the files to my phone and these were saved to the camera roll app.

I then launched Adobe Lightroom Mobile and imported the images, both jpeg and RAW as I shoot both.

As you can see while the meta data is correct but the file name has changed.  So its not the Adobe app changing the name but likely something forced on the Leica app by iOS when it saves out to the camera roll app.