Category: Photography

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A normal week ahead

This week things are back to normal. In fact normal work life hit yesterday when my boss phoned as we had a major issue. So today was busy busy busy.

Last week was fantastic, such a great mix of activities. On the photography front there was Wedding and Landscape Photography, the Landscape Photography was more location scouting, the shot above taken with my Nikon Series 1 V1 and RAW file processed on location on my iPad using SnapSeed, if money was no object I would carry a MacBook Air, but then if money was no object I would be spending just about every free minute of my time doing photography.

As previous mentioned, we also managed some motorcycling in the North Yorkshire Dales, fantastic roads, fantastic scenery and we even got to practice some serious water crossings; on a bike; thats interesting!

A seven mile hike was also fitted in, following the river, from Aysgarth Falls, which is where the photography above was taken from.

We also managed to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary, champagne was the order of the day. We even went for a 2.7 mile run before lunch in the continued effort to get fit.

I also received back, my first developed shots from my Ebony Large Format Camera. I had sent seven off to be developed and all seven came back spot on. There not photographic master pieces but at least they all came out and were correctly exposed.

I’ll be posting results up in the coming months, in fact one of the last shots I took was last months photography of the month, its not great but being film and an early shot on my long road to learning the ins and outs of Large Format Photography, its one that I am pleased with.

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Photo of the Month – August

Ebony 45s
Nikkor 150mm f/5.6
1/15 Sec at f/32, ISO100
Fuji Provia 100 5×4 Sheet

Not quite the shot I wanted.  There had been storm clouds behind the Cathedral and Castle but bright evening sunshine illuminated the field.  Then the rain came, and I could not get the shot until the rain cleared, unfortunately the dark clouds had cleared as well.  Still a pleasing shot.

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Photography Biker Style

This week we hit the road. A few days away to rest and recuperate.

We wanted to do a little location scouting, a bit of walking and a bit of Motorcycling. From the sound of it most of those items seem a little conflicting. On a bike you are a little restricted with regard to luggage space.

Ruck sacks and walking gear take up a lot of room and so space for camera gear is extremely limited. Though taking pictures was not a primary goal. We had visited the area last year for a bike trip and spotted a few areas that needed a more detailed investigation.

We started on Tuesday, which was a bike trip up the east coast. The Humber Bridge is now free to cross for Motorcycles so that was our first destination. We crossed the Humber and had our first break at the Cafe there.

We then continued up the east coast to Bridlington and finally Scarborough, before turning west to head for our final destination Aysgarth in the North Yorkshire Dales.

We had stopped here before and wanted to try a walk in the area, in particular near the river and falls.

Wednesday was a walk, a 7 mile walk along the river a valley, trying to spot the best locations to shoot the river, falls and Bolton Castle

Unlike Tuesday which was sunny all day, Wednesday started off with light drizzle, but not enough to put us off. Camera wise I was packing light, just a Nikon Series 1 V1 and two small zooms. I also had a GorillaPod tripod, not brilliant but better then nothing to try and catch the obligatory time laps shot of the river.

The weather improved and sun came out, making it a great and very enjoyable walk. I managed to spot a number of great view points where I would like to come back with my Landscape Photography gear. Unfortunately due the amount of rain in the previous few days the river was extremely high and swollen and it was not worth the risk to get to close.

As you can see in the above shot, it’s an area that shows photographic promise, and the next trip will be in the car so I can bring more gear and more importantly my heavy series 5 Gitzo.

I had also taken with me the iPad and these RAW files were processed on it using the SnapSeed App.

That night we put the diet to one side and enjoyed a rather nice meal. Bottle of wine, followed by a selection of fine Yorkshire Cheeses. Well we had walked 7 miles over Hill and Dale!

Thursday it was time to head home.

A gentle ride through the national park, heading south thought the middle of England.

Biking, Walking/Photography and more Biking; what more could anyone want from a holiday.

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From Corporate Portraits to Landscapes

On the photography front, last week I did some corporate portraits.

These can vary from environmental portraits, simple grab shots of people working to more formal shots.  Sometimes these involve the absolute minimum of equipment, just a camera and flash, finding an area with an uncluttered background; other times its more like a full studio shoot.  You take in C-Stands, a background, my portable Elinchrom Flash gear and a high end SLR.  A lot depends on the amount of time your customer will allow you to have and setup time.

Sometimes all they want is you to come in, fire off a few shots and get out again.  Others will allow you to take over a meeting room for a day, you can set it up as a studio and work in a far more controlled manor.  Its important to make your customer understand what you need to deliver the results they need.

This week its personal photography.  I’ll be scouting for waterfalls in North Yorkshire.  Its not a full on photography trip, the main thing is to find some good locations and take a few reference shots.

I’ll be travelling light and taking the minimum of equipment.

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iPhone as a wet plate camera

It never fails to amaze me how inventive some people can be.

A hundred years ago camera film was not the plastic and celluloid of today but plates of metal or more commonly glass.

Well what is the bag of an iPhone 4 & 4s made of? Glass!

Yes you guessed it, some very clever people have cleaned up the back glass, coated it in a photographic light sensitive solution and used the iPhone as a piece of film to produce a original works of art.

Developing the image must have been fun, working in total darkness painting developer onto the back of the phone with a paintbrush.

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an interesting mix of Photographs last month

Looking back over my photographs this last month, its been an interest mix. The shot above is one of my current favourites, its was a quick snap with my iPhone4 while walking back to my hotel.

Its also been a month of variety in cameras. I have been shooting with my phone, mirror-less interchangeable camera the Nikon 1 Series, SLR, but also with film.

I have images that I am pleased with each of my cameras, and unless you print big, apart from lens perspective and dynamic range; if your posting on the web they all look equally good.

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Gym, Wii, Beer, oh and Sorting out Lightroom

In an attempt to tick as many boxes in my categories list as possible, todays blog posting is a bit of a summary of the day.

Its been a busy day at work, and it has been a tempting time because of all the cakes that seem to be around at the moment.  Until the afternoon I had managed to resist, but then after a lunchtime trip to Nandos (yes so much for the diet, but I did have only a 1/4 chicken, rice and corn), I found on my desk a Chocolate muffin.

Thanks Bill!

After a busy afternoon doing 3PAR Admin, (doesn’t Exchange 2010 eat disk space), we went straight to the gym.  Nothing in particular, just a bit of general weight work, and 30 minutes cardio, spent between the Cross-Trainer and the Rowing Machine.

This evening has been far more fun.  A rather nice real ale, and a bit of time split between playing bowls with my lovely wife Caroline on the Wii, and sorting out her data on her external hard drives.

Her old PowerBook just had a 60GB drive so most of her data was on a mix of old hand-me-down firewire 800 drives that I no longer required.

Well with her shiny new MacBook Pro Retina, I also bought her a new 1 TB usb3 drive to hold her iTunes and Lightroom Libraries.

So between beer, the Wii and moving data around, tonight has been rather a fun night.  It was great to finally get my hands on her new MacBook Retina.  I was amazed at the speed it could backup and optimise a Lightroom V4 library.  Very impressive.

While sorting out her data I also took a few moments to look through some of the photos she has took of me, I thought you might enjoy this one, its me and Chris Bennett shooting Herons. With cameras of course not guns!

Chris with his Trusty Nikon D3s and me with a Nikon D200.

Anyway, its getting late and its time for bed.  Now that I have Adobe Lightroom on her Laptop, i’ll be finishing sorting out her data then getting Photoshop installed and trying that.

I wonder what else I can volunteer to do, anything will do as long as it involves using this joy of a machine.  The new MacBook Pro Retina with SSD and 16 Gb of RAM, fast hardly describes it!

 

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Hands on with the Sony RX100

On my lunch break last week I went into my local London Camera Exchange and got my hands on the new Sony RX100.

Small, compact but packing great ergonomics and a very large for a sensor for a compact camera, the same size as my Nikon V1 but with a resolution of 20MP.

As compacts go its possibly the best yet.  Would I have one, well as tempting as it is, I still love my viewfinders, add an optical viewfinder like a Fuji X100, or X10 or a great EVF like the the Sony NEX-7 or Nikon V1, but manage to keep its small size then its the perfect carry everywhere.

Thanks to LCE for letting me test out the camera, and also thanks to the staff for putting up with me taking photographs of them.

The camera shoots RAW as well as jpeg, I set the camera to both and popped a 8GB SD Card into it.  If you have ever used a Sony NEX then you will know what a mess they are.  Every time I have used a NEX-7 I have found the menu’s difficult to navigate.  The menu on the RX-100 is much clearer and easier to use.

With a simple mode dial on the top to choose auto, aperture or shutter priority, even manual if you wish, its easy to select the mode you want.  The function button on the back means you can quickly and easily change key functions such as ISO and like the Canon S100 compact a customisable ring round the lens can be set to be an aperture control, shutter or even ISO or exposure compensation control.

All together a great compact camera.  Until Adobe and the other major players update their RAW converts we will not know for sure about the image quality but with the size of the sensor, and from what I have seen from the jpegs it all looks good.

Whether it beats the Fuji X100 we will have to see, but for size, the fact it has a good zoom and the fast autofocus, its going to be close.  I suspect for image quality the Fuji X100 may have the edge, but for many the other advantages the Sony has over the Fuji will swing it, and for those that do want the better image quality Sony have the NEX-7 which rivals the Fuji X100 and the Fuji X-Pro 1; but of course they will not fit in your top pocket.