Family, Photography and other misc news
While reading up on the new L mount 28mm lens from Leica, and its quite a lens, I saw that Leica had released a new update for my camera the M10.
As I have frequently mentioned smaller companies like Leica and Fuji are very good at supporting their old cameras. Remember to keep checking for updates.
While I shoot professionally, mainly corporate and events plus model portfolios and the odd wedding I also try to have a walk around Lincoln at least a couple of times a week.
Its a very photogenic little city.
I often have a number of projects on the go, my main ones are drinks and doors at the moment, plus people on the on the phone, but I also have a lamp post and signs project. Simple little projects like this give you a focus when you are lacking in direction.
Its an easy thing to do and can lead to some interesting future ideas and keeps your interest when you need some inspiration.
Leica M10
Leica Summilux-M 1:1.4/50 Asph 50mm f/1.4
50mm, 1/90 Sec at f/16, ISO1600
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic V10
With us back in lockdown due to COVID-19 my studio shoots are all cancelled again. This was a quick snap of one of our house plants.
So last month I started to book photography shoots for January, only a few as things were not looking good on the COVID-19 infection rate.
As expected after Christmas Day we had a full lock down. I had not anything booked for the first week of January but was hoping to start working after that. Instead I spent last week canceling shoots again.
I’ll be doing some initial planning for February and I do support the lock down but I feel sorry for the small businesses and self employed, for them this is very hard.
There are few iconic camera shops left and I saw in AP (Amateur Photographer) today that we are losing another one.
Richard Caplan has now closed the specialist Leica and Hasselblad dealer. I’ll be sad to seem them go.
I was worried about Robert White’s but following his death the shop has kept going and remains a wonderful Aladdin’s cave of items.
With the internet one can fine difficult items but often only if you know what you are looking for. These older specialist shops had staff who knew their craft and could really help you out. Its going to be tough for shops like this in the future but I hope they can keep going.
For my studio and wedding work I generally use a Nikon D800, if rumours are true the D8xx Z version to come after the D850 and Z7II will be coming in just over a year.
This is likely to be called either the Z8 or Z9. Its been confirmed that at least three prototypes are currently in the field being testing.
For me the most interesting prototype is the 60 MP, 16 bit A/D model with a 5,76 MP viewfinder, 120 Hz refresh rate, this is going to. be quite the studio and landscape beast and would work well for me.
Here is hoping that it comes in under £3K.
With lock down back on, and this area now in Tier4, planning shoots for the early 2021 is proving interesting.
I managed a few shoots this year but they were few and far between.
The best shoot of this this year was with Helen seen above at the Two Wei Location House. This is a fantastic location is one that I hope to use many times in the future. Helen is an amazing local model who I also will be working with again.
In the last couple of months I managed three quick shoots, Jasmine and Nicola I have photographed before and will again. I used them as test subjects for a number of ideas that I will develop some more in the future. Alaria I had never worked with before but had lots of ideas that I knew would work from previous tests.
We ran out of time before we ran out of ideas which is always a good position to be in.
My first shoot for January is another test, a new model, a new location we will see what comes from it.
Nikon D800
Nikkor 105mm f/2.8
105mm, 1/200 Sec at f/8, ISO100
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic V10
The lovely Alaria who I was supposed to photograph in November but with lock down 2 I cancelled my December shoots and moved the November shoots to December.
OK I know its Winter now but was Autumn when I took this pictures and wrote this blog post! Silly fact, those of us in the UK call it Autumn but in America its called Fall. In general we often rightly assume are American friends are wrong (joking) but in this case they are correct. In the past here in the UK we called Autumn Fall but at some point changed the season’s name.
The weather and the light over the last month has generally been awful but we have had the odd nice day, and the latest one I took the car to a pretty little Lincolnshire village and photographed the church and surrounding area. With the bright low warm light the colours did not look real, they were so intense.
I had an enjoyable hour photographing the village and came back with some nice pictures.
So if you get some nice light, even if only a few hours at this time of year its well worth going out and making the best of it.
Merry Christmas everyone.