Family, Photography and other misc news
The frosty mornings are now well upon us, and its a great time to get a few simple but stunning little photographs.
Any camera really can do this even many simple compacts, but best if it can focus close, get in there and photograph dew drops on flowers or cobwebs.
If you have a bit of snow, even a blade of grass can become photogenic, get down there and in close, you may be surprised.
In Lincoln we often have students walking round the city setting up cameras on tripods, usually video but sometimes still.
Watching people use a tripod and seeing how they struggle you quickly realise why so many photographers give up on tripods. I felt that way for a while myself until I found the secret.
The excuse to not use one is generally that there too big and heavy to cart around, but as you watch people struggle you quickly realise how difficult and frustrating they are to use and it’s this that generally stops people from carrying them.
Having been in that position I can tell you that the biggest issue is the tripod head and its two factors that cause the issues.
This way using the tripod becomes a joy and if using it is fun and your getting shots you otherwise could not get, then the carrying it somehow becomes far less of a chore.
Good light can make or break a photograph. You can either play it safe or really push yourself.
Looking at a shot it can for the untrained eye be difficult to tell how a shot was lit. The top shot was actually outdoors and is a flower in the garden. I put a black cloth behind the flower and then added a flash to the side and the front. The shutter speed was high as was the flash power, this completely overpowered the daylight giving the feel I wanted.
The shot of Lisa is a very simple lighting setup, Two large soft boxes each side and a softbox over the model giving a kiss of light to the hair.
Once again the shot above is an interesting mix of daylight and flash. The daylight is deliberately underexposed with most of the light coming from a single Elinchrom flash head shooting into a brolly. The most challenging aspect of the shot once I had balanced the daylight and flash was the wind, it was after this shoot I purchased two heavy C-Stands.
Try challenging yourself with flash, either flash on its own or mixed with daylight, and once you find a setup that works file it a way for use when you need guaranteed results, then go out and challenge yourself again.
I did a quick shoot last week to test the D800 in studio conditions, afterwards back in the office, I did not have time for any editing so I quickly imported them to Lightroom, ran through my normal backup routine then added the photographs into a Collection to sync up to the Cloud.
The intention was when I had a free moment or two, to grab the iPhone or iPad and using Lightroom Mobile app to do some initial editing.
The problem was it never seemed to sync and the photographs never appeared on either of my devices. Checking my settings I noticed that it said the app was unlicensed. No matter what I tried I could not get it to sync and it would not even let me log out. In the end I deleted the app from the iPhone and re-installed; once I logged in it burst into life and proceeded work.
Leica M8
Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M
50mm, 1/80 Sec at f/2, ISO160
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom V5.7
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.10.1
We have now lived in the new house for a year and a lot of work has been done. The dream we had was a new bungalow in the country, with cosy real fire, a dedicated formal dinning room, plus kitchen diner. There was also our hobbies, Caroline wanted her own craft room and I wanted an office to use as my digital darkroom, plus we wanted a room to use as a studio, music room and library.
Around the house we have replaced all the doors and windows, had the chimney reworked so we can have a real fire and replaced all the major lights with low energy 1 to 1.5 watt LED lights. Caroline’s craft room and my digital darkroom are complete so the house is well underway, with only what we are calling the sun room still to start. This room will be a second living room used for music, a library and my studio.
The garden has been a major focus for us this last year, and just this month we finally completed the raised beds. They have been successful and we have now had our major harvest of butternut squash, courgette, beans and peas, plus lettuce, cauliflower, beetroot, leeks and carrots. We learnt a lot, things we raised in the cold frames then transplanted to the garden worked well, things we direct sowed into the raised beds got attacked by birds. Everything worked except the cauliflower, we had netted them off to protect them from the birds, but all that did was protect the caterpillars, which enabled them to decimate them.
One the garden front as well as the vegetable plot we also wanted to keep bees and raise chickens. We bought two flat packed hives, but apart from the stands and the brood box we did not find the time to finish them so thats on hold for now.
At the bottom of the garden behind the garage we built a large compost bin, beside that was a rather nice looking but very rickety garden shed. The plan was to tear this down and in its place build a chicken coop.
The old shed took a lot of getting down, it seems that ivy is the perfect way to hold up a building.
Once down we dug over the area and laid a rectangle of paving slabs. These would help discourage the foxes from digging under to get at the chickens. The bed of the coup run was made up of soil, gravel, sand and topped with bark.
If your on a budget then you can find plans on the internet for building your own coops and runs.
We took the easy root and purchased a coop with integrated run; it came in prefab’ed sections that just needed putting together.
It went together easily and then it was ordering the feeders, waterers, and other accessories.
It was not long before we were ready to get the girls. We purchased four Copper Black’s a modern hybrid cross based on the Maran.
With the girls moved in, we let them have lots of peace and quiet, but did hand feed them a treat just before they put themselves to bed.
By the next day we were surprised to find an egg, so its safe to say the girls are settling in.
Getting new gear is always inspiring, but if you have a new piece of equipment or you have not shot with a particular piece of equipment for a while, its always worth having a practice shooting session.
I now have a Nikon D800 and also a PhaseOne back for my medium format Hasselblad, so I am keen on getting some meaningful practice before I use them for a real paid shoot.
With that in mind I have booked a studio for this week and have a friendly local model, so I’ll be shooting some nice boudoir lingerie images.
The intention is test the D800 and Hasselblad in a studio situation. Plans may have to change as I need a new trigger for the Hasselblad, and the new trigger for the Hasselblad has not yet arrived. I may just have to use my normal wireless trigger that works on my Nikon’s and Leica’s. It does mean i’ll have to get a few dreamy Leica Summilux shots, oh what a shame 😉
So today I’ll be giving the gear a quick check and charging batteries and checking memory cards. Two standard lens for the Nikon and two spare batteries just in case.
I’ll also be planning some wildlife test shoots. So far its just been the Nikon in the garden but later this year I am planning on visiting Hartsholme Park with Chris. He will have his new Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 PRO by then so its going to be a good testing day.
By default when in the normal catalogue view within Lightroom the two main buttons at the bottom offer import photographs or export photographs.
But what about importing and exporting catalogues; well it is in the menu system but a faster way to get to it, is to just press the option key.
With Lightroom, you often get a different set of options on the buttons when you press the option key, give it a try.
PS if your a Windows user try the Alt key.
Everyone seems to be bringing out a Mark II or Mark III at the moment.
The full frame mirror-less A7 range has been getting better. Its main issues have been noisy shutter, vibration, a slightly inferior RAW file that seems to do some internal lossy compression before saving.
While I admire the continued efforts of Sony with these endless releases of ever improving cameras I also feel sorry for people that buy Sony gear and then six months later they release a better model. I also find it irritating that they release cameras without battery chargers and lens hoods are often an optional extra.
Currently my full frame needs are met with my Nikon D800, and one day I hope a Leica M9 or M 240 so while my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) wants me to buy one the limitations and the fact that it would just duplicate my Nikon and Leica system stops me.
Still if your after full frame and autofocus in a small package its hard to ignore.
The truth of the matter is that within ten years cameras like the low end Nikon and Canon SLR’s will look far more like the Sony A7 then a SLR. They will go mirror-less. Its a matter of cost. Producing a mirror box and optical viewfinder is expensive and when Nikon and Canon do jump onto this, possibly when the autofocus matches there low end SLR’s it will happen.
Then its going to be difficult to see where Sony, Fuji etc are going to go. I feel Panasonic and Olympus have a better chance of being a long term success, as the smaller micro four thirds cameras can make an excellent second small system
If your an Apple user you are most likely already aware that the latest bug fix for iOS 8 was released today v8.1.1, not played with it much yet but lets hope things are getting more stable. I have had a few app crashes but nothing too bad. Certainly not like iOS 2.0 which was in my opinion unusable.
Of more notable concern for camera users, at least for us Leica users was updated firmware for the Leica M series. Not having the latest M I checked the site anyway expecting not to see anything for me but was surprised to see Leica have released updates for all the digital M series cameras including the original digital Leica M8.
Its great to see such support for a camera that was released back in 2006 I think and my M8.2 was 2008.
Certainly from recent history only Fuji seem to be giving there customers such good support.
Chris has also recently blogged about firmware updates for his OM D here. I was glad to see that the Leica updates are applied the same way as my Nikon updates, just copy the firmware update to an SD card and update from Camera.
Like Chris I prefer this method of update. I have not updated a recent Sony, but when I had to update the Alpha A55 I had to use the computer, see here for details.
Click on the link below for the update download and instructions.
Instructions for updating the
LEICA M8/M9/M Monochrom/M-E Firmware
The update process takes around 180s. You will then be prompted to restart the camera using the main switch.