Author: Richard

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Street: From Leica to Phone to Web

Street to Phone

So with the release of iOS 9.2 we finally got the ability to use the Camera Connection kit on our iPhones and I have to admit its about time Apple.  While the iPad does make more sense for this kind of work, for those of us with iPhone 6Pluses it can be useful.

This afternoon I set about testing it out.

A quick walk around the wet streets of Lincoln soon gave me a small selection of images. Back at my desk the memory card came out of the camera in was plugged into the phone. Into the photo app to import the shots then into Lightroom Mobile for a bit of an edit. The top shot is the results.

Street to Phone-2 copy

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iOS 9.2 update released

Today Apple released the second major update to iOS 9.  The thing that interested me with this update is they have enabled support for the camera connection kit on the iPhone.

If like me you have a iPhone 6 Plus then being able to import photographs direct to the phone and then into an application like Adobe Lightroom mobile could be very useful.

I look forward to giving a go.

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Wet & Windy

Wet Cobbles

Its been a stormy and wet weekend.  Luckily for us in Lincoln its been nothing like as bad as in the north of England and Scotland.  Despite the wind, the Lincoln Christmas Market has been in full swing and the wet cobbles of Lincoln have been packed with shoppers unlike this shot I took a few weeks ago.

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Lincoln Christmas Market & Lightroom Mobile

Lincoln-Christmas-Market

This weekend is the Lincoln Christmas Market.  If you have to commute into and out of Lincoln be prepared for a long wait.  Even if like me and my wife you commute on a motorcycle it can take you a while to get in and out of the city.

Today I took my little Leica M8 into the city to shoot few street scenes.  They were then imported into my iPad; I edited the Jpegs in Lightroom Mobile.

As an experiment I set the aperture to f/5.6 to give me a bit of depth of field, the ISO to 640 to give me a reasonable shutter speed and prefocused to about 4 meters.  Then as views appeared I took a shot.

Most were rejected but a few had a bit of interest.  It was also a useful test of Lightroom Mobile and how I could integrate it into my usual workflow.

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Christmas Presents for Photographers

Cameras and lens are a bit much but there are  some presents that a photography would appreciate. 
Here are a few ideas. 

  • Inspirational books by photographs they admire. 
  • A bean bag to rest a camera or heavy lens on. 
  • A Camera Lens Mug in their system. 
  • A fast SD or CF memory card. 
  • A premium leather neck or wrist camera strap. 
  • A Pack of their favourite printer paper. 
  • Camera themed Pendent or Cufflinks. 
  • White Balance Card. 
  • Grey Card. 
  • Colour Checker. 
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News Picture Agency stops accepting Raw

A well known news picture agency announced the other week that it would no longer accept Jpegs files from processed Raw files, but only out of camera jpegs with editing consisting of cropping, rotation or colour correction would be allowed.

Many people have issues with digital photography and it not being real, and there is a growing trust issue with more and more newspapers and magazines editing photographs to make them more newsworthy.

 

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Street Markets – Street Photography

 

Lincoln Market, Leica M4, Ilford HP5 Plus, Processed in Kodak X-Tol developer
Lincoln Market, Leica M4, Ilford HP5 Plus, Processed in Kodak X-Tol developer
There is quite a resurgence in street photography, driven by the growth in small quiet cameras; but a lot of people are very nervous about it.  Not only are you afraid of peoples reactions but in todays more security paranoid world, someone with a camera is treated with suspicion.

Events are a good place to start, people expect photographers at events.

The above shot was taken at the monthly farmers market in Lincoln, its a more interesting picture because its taken from behind the counter.  Shot on my little Leica M4 film camera, the people in it are busy with their shopping and are not noticing me.

 

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Pre focus in the Autumn Sun

HighStreet

The above shot was a test of two things.  The first was my pre focusing technique, I selected the focus and aperture first then as the scene developed I raised the camera to my eye and took a single shot.  Fast and unobserved.

Refocusing and using the zone focusing technique is very fast but does take practice, and is something that I am not that good at.

The second test was me working on my mobile workflow.

After taking this and a few other photographs, I took the memory card and imported it into my old iPad2.  I had shot RAW & JPG (DNG and Black & White JPG), I then used Lightroom Mobile to drop the contrast and reduce the highlights of the JPG and boost the shadows.

For a JPG its not a bad shot.

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How Many Lens do you need?

Large Format Lens
Large Format Lens

So how many lens do you need?  On the SLR front I have a wide angle zoom, standard zoom and a telephoto zoom.

Then I have a wide prime, a standard prime, a macro prime and a couple of big telephoto’s.

For my Leica its a bit different.  Generally a rangefinder is only good with lens from 28mm to 75mm.  Leica make a range from about 21mm to 135mm, but for the extremes you either need to use live view, or an EVF if you have a Leica M (type 240).

I currently have lens from 24mm to 50mm for my Leica with the hope to add a 90mm and possibly a 28mm.

Many people choose a lens for its handling or size, I know a photographer who owns and used two different 28mm.  A very small f/2.8 version which is his favourite due to its very small size, but also has a f/1.4 for low light use.