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iPhone 5

Well after all the hype the new iPhone5 was released last Friday, rather then queue I placed an order on line, and it arrived last night.

What are my initial views?  Well first its very light and not much bigger then the old iPhone4 but the screen is much better, that half an inch really makes a difference.

The other thing is the speed, except for a slight pause opening iBooks, everything seems to happen instantly.

As a Photographer I have of course been testing out the camera.

I have been impressed with the results from the iPhone4, for a phone it was very good, but over the last two years the bar has definitely moved.  So far I have just been playing with the panoramic function.  It works like that in many Sony Cameras where you sweep the camera slowly across the scene.

For an indoor shot in bad light under mix source light, I thought it did a very commendable job.

Now to get my old iPhone4 unlocked so that Caroline can have it.

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Messing about on the River

Something I have been meaning to try for sometime is Kayaking.  The idea of Sea Kayaking around a remote Scottish Island, being able to get to views impossible any other way; pulling up into remote coves, its a bit of an exciting dream, as is getting some saltwater fishing lines and trying one’s luck in grabbing a quick bite.

Last year we fulfilled one of Caroline’s long held dreams of horse riding along a remote beach, playing in the surf on the Isle of Lewis.

Now I had no idea if I could kayak or if I would enjoy it, so I booked myself on a taster course held at Lincoln Canoe Club on the Brayford Pool.

It was a 10:00 am start at the Lincoln Canoe Club Boat house on a slightly overcast but not too cold Sunday morning.

We arrived early, and made our way up the stairs to the briefing room.  Graham would be our coach for the day and we started with a brief introduction about the club, then the safety briefing.

First the difference between a Life Jacket and a Buoyancy Aid.  A life jacket is designed to keep you afloat, even if your unconscious, a Buoyancy Aid will assist you to swim.  Why not a Life Jacket in a Kayak, well if you capsize it can trap you underneath the boat preventing you from escaping, thus leading to drowning.

We then covered capsizing and what to do if we were either tipped out of the boat or stuck in the boat underwater.

Lastly we covered water born diseases; especially Leptospirosis.

Graham then asked who wanted to give up the whole idea!  But he had not managed to put anyone off.  Then it was a quick head count, unlucky thirteen; and we headed down stairs to get fitted up with Buoyancy Aids, Paddles and our boats.

What most people call Canoes are in fact Kayaks, in the picture above it shows a Canoe being ably paddled by father and son.  Canoes are open and are paddled by an oar that has just one paddle on one end, while a Kayak can be sit on top or in, but your legs are stretched out in front of you, also there is a paddle on each end of the oar.

We carried down our Kayaks to the dock edge and learnt how to get in.  This was easier then I expected.  Sitting on dock with one hand on the centre back opening, you slowly slide your body in.  Then your away.

We slowly headed into the Brayford Pool, and once all assembled we started our lessons.

Our first stroke to learn, was the sweep stroke.  With this it enables you to turn the boat round, its quite easy and we all got the hang of it very quickly.

Next a back stroke, then we put them together to spin the boat round on the spot.

Of all the strokes the one I could not master was the general forward stroke, I kept veering off, either right or left, but we also learnt how to brake with the back stroke, so I would stop and start again.

After some practice round the pool we headed down one of the rivers that feed into the Brayford Pool.  These were tricky especially for me as there was a couple of very low bridges to negotiate, these had me practically laying across the boat to get through.

Some of the more experienced paddlers had marked out a slalom on the river so a few of us had a go.  There was much crashing and laughter, it was a lot fun and nobody capsized even though there was thirteen of us!

The time flew by and after an hour and a half of ‘Messing about on the River’, it was time head back to the dock and get out.

This was a little tricker then getting in, but I had help and managed, so Caroline’s hope of getting a shot of me falling in, was unfulfilled.  Maybe next time.

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Film Friday: Street Photography – that be a Leica then?

Last Saturday I had reason to pop into Lincoln, while there I did the tourist bit and walked up to the Castle Square.

Up hill Lincoln is great, and Castle Square as you might guess has the Castle on one side and the Lincoln Cathedral on the other.

The farmers market was on and I though it would be a great day to shoot some street photography, shots of people browsing the market stalls etc.

Now for years the traditional camera for this has been the trusty 35mm Leica Range Finder.  With its bright viewfinder showing more then 100% of the field of view, zone focusing with the fantastic fast glass which even now has depth of field markings on, and the silent shutter, its a hard tool to better for this type of photography.

Of course most of us nowadays would reach for an digital SLR or one of the new modern Compact System Camera’s such as the Olympus Pen, Panasonic GF-1 or GF X, better yet maybe a Sony NEX-7 or Fuji’s X range.

But no I decided to be a bit different, well to be truthful very different!

I had read an article recently about a photographer shooting street photography with Medium Format, so I thought I would give it ago.

My Medium Format camera is a Hasselblad V System Camera, it has a waist level finder, manual focus, no light meter, oh and shoots film.

So what did I do, well I loaded it up with some Ilford HP5Plus Back & White film, left the tripod at home and fitted the leather neck strap.

In the article I read, the guy braced the camera via the strap and into his belly, so I thought I would do the same.  First of all wondering around I found my view point; whipped out my handheld light meter and took some incident readings.  It was a bright day and EV15 was pretty much the reading all day, so with HP5 rated at ISO400, that gave me f/8 at 1/500 second, the fastest the leaf shutter fitted into the lens will go.

One thing that surprised me, was how little attention I was getting.  Usually when shooting medium format or large format, on my big Gitzo Series 5 tripod, I certainly get noticed, and other photographers come over and talk to me, very interested and what I am doing.

With the Hasselblad close to my chest and shooting with the waist level finder, people did not realise I was taking pictures as I did not bring the camera up like one would with a traditional SLR.

So even with such a big slow camera, I was able to get shots without people reacting in the usual way.

As you can see from the above two examples its a technique that works surprisingly well.

 

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Easter in RAW

I may have blogged in the past about always shooting in RAW.  Here is a rather poor example which I like anyway.

Back in the film days we developed our films in our favourite chemistry.  Once developed that was it.  Now with digital we have the option of shooting RAW and when new software is developed we can go back to our old files and ‘re-develop’ using the latest RAW developer.

The above shot was a snap of an easter event happening in Lincoln, It was poor light, shooting into the sun.  The orginal RAW developer did not make much of it but this week, I was exporting images again for my off site backups and this caught my eye.  I decided to re-process using the latest Adobe Lightroom V4.  Its now much better then the original.

Still not a great image but one I like.

Always shoot RAW.

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Leica Announcements – M and M-E

Well the hoped for Leica Compact System camera did not materialise, that will have to wait till next year, but we did get two new Leica M’s.

The rumoured M10 was actually the Leica M. A change for Leica in this being a CMOS sensor’ed model. At 24 MP and also with an optional EVF its a new direction for Leica M series cameras. Along side this they also announced a R series adapter. While I do not think this will make R series SLR users happy, it does give M users more options.  They have also added a handgrip which includes tethering options and a GPS, plus flash TTL flash  socket.

Leica M with EVF and R Series Adapter

A surprise announcement was the Leica M-E, this looks like a rebadged M9, it will be interesting looking at the details.  The M9 is a stunning CCD sensor’ed camera, its limitations was always the processing power of its electronics, if its just a rebadged M9 then the price will be the key.  If they have updated the electronics to make it a little more speedy then it would be worth the old M9 price.

No announcement to what will happen to the existing M9, I will certainly be looking out for some good deals.

 

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Remote Access to iTunes

I have been thinking recently about getting a MacBook Air, the little 11 inch model.

With it having a solid state disk then going much higher then 128 GB soon ups the price, which for a secondary machine for travel is not justifiable.

You can carry an external hard drive, and I might have to for photography backup, but often I might just want to travel light.  So I was wondering how can I access my music, video and photographs at home.

A bit of research, a little bit of port redirection on my router, and I soon had the answer.  Now where ever I am in the world, with internet access, my local iTunes on our laptops can connect to my media server at home and play any of the videos and music on its iTunes library.

Oh yes, Caroline’s old 12 inch Powerbook is now my media server.

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Film Days – Film Friday

Since April I had shot seven shots on the Large Format Ebony a traditional 5 x 4 inch none folding field camera, the first few were quite average, but it was a matter of learning the techniques involved. Just loading and unloading the film into the dark slides is a major process where much could go wrong.

Well I have now had those seven shots developed and scanned. One in particular I was very pleased with and fits in with a long term project I am working on. Unfortunately I took it in July, so it did not qualify under my own rules for picture on the month.

I was determined that this months picture of the month would be one shot on large format, so when an opportunity arose for a possible decent shot I took it. It was one shot and luckily it worked. Over the coming months i’ll be posting my scans, so you can see my results as I develop (pardon the pun) as a Large Format Photographer.

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Photokina and Early Annoucements -Sony RX1

As seems to be the habit now, with less then a week to Photokina 2012, camera manufactures are falling over each other to preempt and pre-announce new products before the show.

It gets somewhat frustrating when manufactures promise something then it’s six months or more before we can get are hands on to test and judge for ourselves.

It’s one thing I really like about Apple, how often have we had a Apple announcement and the product is either available that day or within a few short weeks.

The biggest surprise so far has been Sony’s announcement of the new RX1, a full frame digital compact with a stunning Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2 lens. Great direct controls, even an aperture ring, the only thing missing looks to be a view finder.

Now if it had that, I am sure many Pros and keen amateurs would find a place for one in there camera bags.

A new full frame SLR and lots of new lens for NEX range was also announced.

Really looking forward to this show, and I have hopes or maybe dreams that Leica will produce something that I can afford, so I can use some of my old Leica Glass.

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Photographs – Real life or Photoshopped

Real or Artistic?

Or as I have had it put to me, film is real and digital is Photoshopped fakery.

One of the joys of digital photography is that is brings what was the art of the skilled darkroom worker and retoucher into the hands of everyone.

The majority of the great studio portraits of the movie stars from the 1930’s and 1940’s used lots of tricks with light, and filters to give them that soft glow. The skin of the stars looked perfect, due to the skill of the retoucher, who in those days used a sharp scalpel and paint brush. But as its film people believed it to be real and still do.

The photograph above was shot on film. Its colour, softness and blur on the sea, produced by the use of filers and a slow shutter speed. Digital trickery not required.

Is digital and Photoshop cheating, or trickery. I think not, they are artistic tools to allow the photographer to achieve his artistic vision for a shot.

I suppose it depends on what the person is trying to achieve with the shot, are you achieving your artistic vision or is the intention to trick the viewer. Truth or Advertising as the saying goes.

In the picture above of the swan, it was a simple noon shot grabbed while I went for a walk one lunchtime, while I thought at the time it had some merit, I was not entirely sure how I would post process it.

Sat at the comfort of my desk in front of my computer my artistic vision soon knew what I had to do. While I enjoy darkroom work, I have to admit, using a computer is easier, faster and produces more repeatable results.

After a few hours I could produce a shot like the one above using a traditional dark room, producing a second or third would be difficult to reproduce. Using a computer its just a simple matter of pressing the print button.