Family, Photography and other misc news
Got the chance to look at the new 12 inch MacBook from Apple. Its a fantastic little laptop, not suitable for real power work, but if all you need is Office apps, email and internet its a fantastic little road warriors laptop.
For me, I have it down to either a new 15 inch MacBook Pro or the desktop MacPro if I can get one from the refurb store at a good discount.
One good thing about living near Lincoln is that there always seems to be something going. Whether the Santa Run or Lincoln Christmas Market in the winter to cycle races and Steam Punk events.
Last weekend was Lincoln’s 1940’s weekend and unfortunately I could not make it but from looking at the photographs people have been post on the Internet it looks like it was a fun filled weekend with lots of photographic opportunities.
I cannot believe its June already. Where is the year going? For us its being a very quiet/busy May; I know that sounds conflicting but we have just not had time to get anything really done.
Caroline’s father has been in hospital having a new knee, so things have been focussed round him, which is why we have been busy. So on the house and garden front its been very quiet.
I can say that the Peas, Beans, Leaks, Lettuce and Potatoes are going great. The cabbages though are not surviving, someone is eating them big time and stripping all the leaves off.
Hopefully June will see us back in the garden and also finally laying the new floor in the music/library/studio room which apart from the floor and some furniture is finished. I cannot wait to have my first studio shoot in there.
Leica M8.2
Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH
50mm, 1/180 Sec at f/8, ISO160
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom CC2015 V6
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.10.3
There are three pieces of advice I can give you for scanning.
So what do I mean by this.
Well scanning is time consuming so do the proceedure once at the highest native resolution of your scanner.
Clean your scanner plate with a soft cleaning cloth then clean your slides/film. Once mounted in the frame clean again. Don’t be surprised that after the scan you made need to clean again and rescan.
Maximise the quality of the scan. Your not after something that looks fantastic that’s your usual editing softwares job. You are after a flat low contrast file which you can work with in a flexible way.
As you can see from the histogram this image is finishing at 232 not 255 so adjust the sliders to maximise the scan over the images histogram range. I also give the mid tones a slight boost and also turn off sharpening and noise reduction. Our third party tools offer far better quality and options then what comes with the scanner software.
I quickly flick through all my images in the slide/film holder setting the histogram appropriate for each image.
I then select batch scan; I scan to a folder which I set as a watch folder in Adobe Lightroom, once each image is scanned it gets auto imported into Lightroom with my default copyright and develop settings preset I have created for this.
Its service time for the BMW this week so I get to ride a loaner, this time a BMW F800R. It’s a fun naked sporty number that can be easily rode or you can get your head down and push on.
Being a naked bike it’s more a sunny day ride and the riding position does put a lot more weight on your arms then I am used to with the GS.
A fun bike but not one I would choose for a long term bike. I like my creature comforts as I ride every day.
Jumping back on the GS a few days later made the big GS seem absolutely huge. At 40,000 miles now the 1200cc boxer engine is nicely run in and with the major service, new tires and brake pads it certainly feels like a new bike.
I’ll be taking it easy over the next few days while I scrub in the tires, and also bed in the brakes but then, well; Summer is coming!
This year I have not managed to do much wildlife photography but one thing that is sure to inspire me is the start of BBC’s Spring watch program.
This year I hope to get out to some of the British Isles more remote islands for some landscape photography. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a few good wildlife shots too.
I am not a Harley rider but a BMW rider, but it was great to see over the last few days all the Harley Davidsons arriving this week for the Super Rally. Harley riders from all over Europe are this weekend descending on Lincoln for a great weekends Rally. One of the great biker rallys at one of the worlds great cities.
Apple today did a quiet update of the rest of the MacBook Pro and iMac range. For the most part it was a minor processor speed bump but for the new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, it did get a Force Touch trackpad and new PCIe-based flash storage that Apple says is 2.5 times faster.
Speed testing has shown it can get throughput up to 2GB/s. This is serious speed and puts the MacBook Pro well above other laptops.
Or are they.
First let me state, Leica rangefinders are not for everyone. You don’t get the wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) view. Your not seeing the same perspective, it suffers from parallax errors. The cameras are very manual, including focus, so getting a well exposed image, focused correctly and framed as you want can seem a challenge.
The bodies start from £3990 for an M-E with no lens, up to £6000 for a Monochrom.
The lens are from £980 to £7350 for the famous Leica Noctilux-M 50mm f0.95 6-Bit in Anodised Silver.
Out of reach for many.
Second hand you can get a M8 for £1000, if you want full frame then there is the M-E for £2750, and a good selection of reasonable lens in the £1000 range, so you can get started for £2000. But you say this is old kit, so lets try a little experiment, what is more expensive, shooting a Leica or shooting Pro Digital SLR?
Well I went to a well known store and prices up a typical pro kit. Two D4s, zooms to cover 12mm to 200mm and a small selection of quality primes, a wide-angle, standard, portrait and macro. No exotic telephotos, just a typical range a pro would want.
Now this is where you may say it gets unfair and I am playing favourites to Leica, but typically Leica users own 1.8 lens a user. The Leica user typically has a wide angle and a standard lens and travels light just with what.
So I went to a well known Leica dealer and priced up new a brand new M-P, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.4 and 90mm f/2, an outfit for the Leica user.
Now I know the SLR outfit is far more useful, flexible and can handle more types of work but the fact is:
Pro SLR outfit £17000
Leica M outfit £13000
So are Leica’s expensive, well yes but then so is a pro digital slr outfit and with an slr, you tend to buy everything and the kitchen sink, whilst many photographers have discovered the joy and simplicity of a rangefinder and just one or two stunning high quality optics.