Author: Richard

Posted on

Film Friday – Large Format Testing – Lincoln Cathedral

Post dated post – 21st July 2012

Last July I spent some time at Lincoln Cathedral, doing some large format testing.  I still have some difficulty visualising the field of view from my 5 x 4 camera.  Practice is what I need so I went out to capture a few shots.

Ebony 45s, Fuji Provia 100, 150mm Nikkor f/5.6, ex f/25 1/4 second

My first shot was of a door, I have a long term project shooting doors and windows, and this will join this.  The high-lights were metered at EVA 12.4, the darkest shadows at 10.5, this gave me an average of 11.6EV.  So I set the lens to f/22 with a shutter speed of 1/4 second.

Inspecting the film with a lupe, the level of detail is simply amazing, yes medium format digital or a 35mm digital stitch on say a Nikon D800 could also produce this level for detail, but there is a simple joy in using the Large Format Ebony that makes the whole shoot an event to enjoy.

There are some wonderful features and details to Lincoln Cathedral and i’ll certainly be going back again to shoot large format again there.

Posted on

Kodak Sensors – Truesense announce m4/3 sensor

As many of you are possibly aware Kodak over the years have produced some great and class leading CCD sensors for digital cameras.  Many of these are used in Medium Format Cameras and in Leica M Digital cameras.

With the troubles that Kodak have been having, they sold off the sensor division and its now know as Truesense.

They have recently made some interesting announcements, first they are going to produce some m4/3 sensors and a monochrome only sensor like that in the Leica Monochrom.  The bigger surprise is that these are going to be CMOS based sensors, so we will also get video and live view.

I doubt any of the main stream camera manufactures will pick up the monochrome version, its mainly going to be used for scientific uses in specialised areas, but maybe one of the small players or a new upstart may produce something with this for the enthusiast photographer.

Posted on

Competition Etiquette

There was a Landscape Photography Competition recently that has produced a lot of controversy on the Internet photography forums.

The main controversy was the winner. The photograph was a blatant copy of a picture from another photographer. What made it obvious was he had a link to the other photographer who he admired.

The other entires generally were commented on because of the excessive Photoshop work and composites.

The extend of the use of Photoshop should be defined in the rules of the competition, general touch up and editing is one thing but the heavy combining of elements from different images is less photography and more computer skills. Unlike many, I do not have a problem with heavy use of Photoshop, many of the techniques can be and were replicated in the darkroom by the greats. It was Ansel Adams who said the negative was the score and the final print the symphony. Many think similarly of the RAW file.

It’s the blatant copying I have a problem with. It’s one thing to try and replicate a well known photography in order to learn, but another thing to present it as your own work.

After the comments that have appeared on the internet the winner has now been disqualified.

Posted on

and the Cold Marches on

We are in November now, and this morning I finally resorted to full thermals and silk liners in my gloves for my morning commute on the motorcycle.

A week ago I visited Hartshome park to try and get my Autumn leaves photographs, it was also bitterly cold.  It was a good job I managed to get out when I did as over this last week the trees have now lost most of their leaves.

With the change in the weather and the leaves being lost, its been quite a bleak view on my morning commute as I look towards Lincoln Cathedral.  This morning though was very different.  The trees whilst bare were shrouded in a gentle mist with the low sun casting a warm glow over the Lincoln West Common.

I may have a go at capturing it next weekend, or if its as cold as last week at Hartsholme Park, I may just chicken out and spend the day in the studio, like I did yesterday.

Posted on

Wildlife Inspiration

Wildlife photography is tricky.  To get good results does cost money, expensive professional DSLR’s, and pro fast glass costing thousands of pounds.  But good knowledge can help you get closer and get good images with cheaper equipment.

Modern cheap cameras such as the Nikon D3100 have reasonable performance and when combined with a good quality 70-300mm lens can produce good results, if you can get close in good light and when the subject is not moving too much.

TV Programs like the BBC Autumn Watch provide excellent inspiration and enable you to increase your knowledge of the natural world.

Whether you have all the gear or just a basic compact, knowledge of your subject and enthusiasm can take you far.

Posted on

Judging Cameras

Some photographs were published on the internet this week claiming to be the output of the new Leica M.  Whether they are real or not, there was a great deal of discussion over the image quality.

It never ceases to amaze me how people feel they can judge the image quality of a camera from low quality jpegs published on a web page.  It is just not possible.

Wait till the camera is released, read reviews from people you trust but most of all, do what I do, visit my local friendly camera store with a spare memory card and do some test shooting yourself.  If you cannot get hold of the camera to test yourself, then see if you can locate some sample RAW files, process them yourself and judge with your own eyes.

Also remember; the way a camera handles is just as important as image quality.  A camera should feel good in the hand, a camera you enjoy and want to shoot with will do wonders for your photography.

Posted on

Creating a Mountain Lion Install Disk

It was with some degree of controversy that Apple released OS X 10.6 and a download only.  Many people wanted the physical media, something I well understand.

With Snow Leopard and then Mountain Lion, I never got round to creating a bootable install disk, but I am thinking of upgrading my hard disk and putting in a solid state disk to replace my current traditional hard disk.

Creating a disk is not hard but does require a degree of patience.

The first job is to get hold of the install files. Not as hard as you might think.  If your have not bought it yet then just purchase it from the App Store.  If like me you purchased it sometime ago, you will find the install will have deleted itself after use.  Just Option-Click in the Store to re-download it.  It will download into your Applications folder.  I suggest you save this file into a safe location.

To make the re-install faster, I am creating an bootable external hard drive.  Launch Disk Utility and create a 10 GB partition.

Make sure you make it a GUID Partition, via the Options button, on my disk above, I have a small 10 GB partition for the Mountain Lion Install, a small Window partition and then a native OS X partition.

Right click on the downloaded Mountain Lion Install file and select show package contents.

Browse to ./Contents/SharedSupport/ and Open InstallESD.dmg, this will mount the image.

Now go back to Disk Utility and select Restore;

Now drag the newly mounted image into the Source box and then drag your destination Disk Partition into Destination, then just click restore, depending on the speed of your disk you will have a bootable disk within a few minutes in which to use for rebuilding your Mac.

Finally to test your disk, go into System Preferences, and select Startup Disk, then select your new Disk Partition to boot from.

Easy, when you know how.

Posted on

Autumn in Hartsholme Park

It was a busy weekend.  First off, an early start and I got to Hartsholme Park shortly after dawn.  We had a very slight snow fall overnight, and the morning was looking good.  I had high hopes for some good images.

I shot a few leaves and trees, the colour was a little limited, I had wanted some good reds but they were a bit lacking.

After shooting a few landscape shots, I headed to the lake and setup with the tripod to shoot some of the wildlife.  Just as I was setting up a Heron flew past, typically I was not ready.  It was the closest I had seen a Heron for over a year, it would have made a fantastic shot.

I then saw a Cormorant fly past, this time I thought I was ready, unfortunately I was still thinking about landscapes and had left the camera in aperture priority set to f/8, thus as you can see in the picture above the picture is a little blurred due to the shutter speed being too low.

The morning was fun if very cold, and it was a reminder to me how difficult wildlife photography is.  I had not done any for several month, and I missed many good shots.

A good morning, which I enjoyed, but I was a little disappointed with the final results.  Still next time I will do better, as they say practice makes perfect.

Posted on

Nikon Series 1 V2 now announced

The Nikon Series 1 V1 was a very good camera if somewhat limited in a few areas.  If you were willing to put up with those limitations it was an excellent camera.  One of its limitations was the user interface.

Now Nikon have announced the Nikon V2 and in someways it addresses the issues of control.

But while is addresses a key limitation on the original, I have to admit, its not a pretty camera.  We have a local camera show soon and I hope to get my hands on one to test, i’ll also be looking forward to testing the new Sony NEX-6 and I hope the Fuji X-Pro1 and X-E1.  It really is a case of digital photographers have never had it so good.