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Whitby in Winter – Day Two Part A

Post date Blog Post Day 2 Sunday 2nd December.

The plan for today was a trip to the harbour and the Abbey, I had three shots in my head for the Harbour, but knew that I would likely be only able to get the one.  After that we would be heading up to the Abbey, I had three shots in mind here but it was likely I would only be able to get two of the shots.

We were stopping at Hillcrest Bed & Breakfast, and over a breakfast of Whitby Smoked Kippers I checked the iPad to confirm the tide times and also using ‘The Photographer’s Ephemeris’, checked the sun position. Unfortunately it looked like unless i could be in two places at once I would have to give up on one of the shots. To get the Sun and tide in the right spot for one of the harbour shots I would not be able to get across the harbour and up to the Abbey to get another shot I wanted.

Still we would try and get at least a couple of shots.

As a bit of an experiment I had borrowed Caroline’s Crumpler Bag and packed the Ebony Camera, two lens and some dark slides. It’s a lot smaller bag then the ruck sack i usually keep it in. I also had the Nikon V1 with me.  While the kit all fitted in the bag, the weight could be telling.

First off we walked into town and across to the other side of the harbour using the swing bridge.  Once down onto the beach to the area where I thought the first shot was, I was unsupprised to see that the sun was unable at this time of year to rise to the point where it would illumiate the main focus of my photograph.  So it was 0/1 for the first attempts.

In fact it you could say it was 0 for 2 as there was another shot I wanted but it meant being on the other side of the harbour and it just would not have been possible to get across and capture both shots before the sun had moved.

Next I climbed onto the Harbour wall to shoot the stone seabed.  There are some interesting features visible at low tide that I wanted to capture.

As you can see in the quick snap I took with the Nikon V1, the sun was not high enough to illuminate what I wanted to photograph.  I will just have to go back in the Spring.

It was now time to head up and take a shot of the harbour from part way up the cliff face. The ramp up was somewhat icy and it made the climb up a little tricky, but we managed.

I’ll blog about the next shot which I took with the Ebony 45S later once I have the film developed in Day 2 part B.

Finally it was time to shoot the Abbey.  There was two shots I had in mind, but it was unlikely I would get the first one as by the time we got up there the sun would have moved round too far, but we should get the second, which I did.  Again I’ll blog about that shot later.

Once the Abbey shot was in the can, we headed back down for a Spicy Mocha Latte and a toasted chibatta.

Then a last walk round the shops and back to the Bed & Breakfast for a rest.  My back was by this time killing me.  The Crumpler bag while fine for a short while was not good for a full day of carrying the large format kit.  Still now I know.

Overall a pleasing day.

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Whitby in Winter – Day One

Post date Blog Post Day 1 Saturday 1st December

With a couple of days free in both our calendars, we decided a quick trip up North to one of our favourite holiday spots, Whitby.

We decided to go by car as there was a risk of Snow over the North Yorkshire Moors, so that gave me free rein over what camera equipment to take.

The day before we set off I fired up two useful iOS apps, one to predict tide times, as two of the shots I had in mind needed low tide; the other app shows where the sun and moon will be as we’ll as there height.  Things looked promising so I decided to pack the following.

  • Large Format Ebony 5 x 4
  • Small Format Leica M4 & M8
  • Micro Format Nikon Series One V1

We had a gentle start, not rushing, just taking our time heading North.  As the toll had been reduced and because of flooding around York we took the Humber Bridge over the river Humber and then headed over the Yorkshire Wolds to Scarborough.

The purpose of stopping at Scarborough was to visit a fabric shop so that Caroline could buy some silk for a project she has been working on for the last year.  Hopefully in the next few months i’ll be able to post some pictures.  It’s been quite an impressive project with lots of research and even the odd course to learn new skills.

Caroline managed to get the fabric she wanted and we then had a leisurely lunch in Scarborough. It was then time to head further north over the North York Moors.

It was here the weather took a wintery turn with snow and a cold wind. It was a little worrying as the snow started to settle on the roads but as we reached Whitby it started to clear.

We soon found the Bed & Breakfast and settled in. A walk into town followed and a fish supper all washed down with a couple of pint of fine Yorkshire Ale.

No Photography yet but a fine start to the trip.

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Low Sun and thoughts of Winter Landscapes

After the intense rain of the last couple of weeks, it been lovely to be greeted with bright blue skies the last few days.  With the low sun its been a difficult commute into work but with the improvement in the weather my thoughts have been on winter landscapes.

So with that in mind the mapping applications have been coming out and I have been looking at where the sun will be and where the tide will be over this weekend, as I feel a large format trip over to Whitby is in order.

If we pop up on the bike i’ll just be taking the Leica M4, M8 or Nikon V1, but if we go by car then it will be with my biggest heaviest tripod and the Ebony Large Format Camera.

If your interested in Apps for photography have a look at ‘The Photographer’s Ephemeris’ not a cheap app but very useful for looking at where the sun and moon will be at a particular location on a particular day, better on the iPad then on the iPhone.

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Rainy Days

Its certainly been wet here in Lincolnshire.  We have been lucky apart from a few flooded roads we seem to have gotten away lightly compared to some areas.

Its situations like this where having a camera with you can be a good idea.  Unfortunately not all cameras are weather sealed and some are more prone to failure then other.

So if your out photographing this week in this bad weather, take care of your gear.

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Lee Filters – Something a little smaller Sir

While circular screw on filters are convenient, square filters such as the well known Cokin System are necessary, for things such as graduated filters.

As you camera system gets larger its not long before you realise you have spent a couple of hundred pounds on filters for each lens size.  Its at this point you start looking at filter systems.  While the Cokin system is possibly the most well know, I decided to invest into the 100mm Lee Filter system.  Now I have a single set of grad’s and a polariser to fit all my lens and cameras, with the aid of just a few adapter rings.  These filters can now be used on my Large Format Lens’ my Hasselblad Lens and my DSLR Lens.

Of course everyone now wants small and more compact high performance cameras such as the Sony NEX, Olympus and Panasonic MicroFourThird’s systems.

So with that in mind, Lee have produced a very high quality smaller filter system the RF-75.

Chris Bennett recently purchased this filter system so with Chris’s kind permission I borrowed it this weekend to give it a try.

The weather this weekend was not conductive to good photography, plenty of rain and hardly any blue sky in sight, but there was a brief spell of sunnier weather Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours.  So with that small windows of opportunity, I put the laptop down and left my Adobe Lightroom alone to try and test out the filter kit.

I headed out to the local church and first took a quick snap with a naked Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron lens.  The above shot is pretty much straight from camera with nothing done to it.

It was now time to test the filter system.  While Chris has a number of adapter rings suitable for his Sony NEX System lens, only one of them is compatible with a lens I had; the Leica 24mm f/3.8 Elmar.  A quick lens change from the 35mm to the 24mm lens and I was ready to test.

The adapter ring screws onto the filter thread of your lens and then the lens holder clips on that.  There is a knack to getting the holder on, but once on its securely held.  I decided to try the polariser to enhance the blue sky.  If your a Sony NEX or MicroFourThird’s system user you will have a advantage over me at this point, as I was testing this on my Leica M8 rangefinder so could not tell through the viewfinder what effect the filter was having.  I took two shots with the filter in different orientations just to make sure.

I found the filter system very well made and any difficulty in its use was more down to my choice of camera rather then the camera system.  I would say its a definite improvement over there 100mm system and well worth looking into if your lens do not need the large 100mm filters.  Of course if your lucky enough to have the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 even the 100mm filters are not large enough!  But Lee even have a solution to that.

Many would say filters are no longer required in todays digital world, and while a lot can be done in Adobe Photoshop and simular products, somethings its just easier and faster to get it right in camera at the point of  image capture.

Thanks Chris for letting me test this out, and if your luckily enough to have an investment in a small camera system then I suggest you take a look at this system.

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Film Friday – Testing Film – Ilford HP5 Plus

Medium Format 120 Ilford HP5 Plus.

Its been a few years since I shot much Black & White film. About twenty years I had a two year period where I shot nothing but Black & White, developing and printing it myself, but apart from a few rolls of medium format film in the last couple of years shot on my Hasselblad, I have not shot any.  Most of my Black & White has been either digital or Colour film converted to Black & White.

During the summer I tested some Ilford HP5 Plus on the Hasselblad in quite bright and contrasty conditions, I was very impressed with how it handled the dynamic range.

The last couple of weeks I have been trying out some Ilford HP5 in my Leica M4.

Its generally rated at 100ISO but you can go much higher, its a bit grainer then some people would like but even in these duller shots its handled itself quite well.  When the sun came out and the contrast increased it certainly looked better. A Black & White film for those high contrast days I suspect.

When shooting people with the Leica, I used zone focusing in the shots above, which meant setting the aperture to f/8 to give me enough depth of field, this meant on occasion the shutter speed was a little low resulting in blurred movement, in this shots they still work but it is something I need to be more aware of.  If I was shooting with my DSLR’s (Nikon D200) or my CSC (Nikon System One V1), I would just ramp up the ISO to give me a faster shutter speed, but with film or a camera with poor high ISO capability, that is something you cannot do.

 

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What are good ergonomics?

So what do I think of about camera ergonomics?

Traditionally, its all been about quick and easy access to the major controls, focus, shutter speed and aperture.  With a Large Format Camera, like my Ebony above, all the key controls are built into the lens.  The camera is just a big box, and focusing is even more simple, you just move the front lens bellow backwards and forwards, hence the leather bellows linking the front and back.

Ergonomic wise its all simple and easy but it is not the fastest way to work.  A major advantage is the huge glass viewing panel at the back.  The down side, once a film or digital back is mounted you can no longer see the viewing screen,and setting up is very slow.

My D200 is possibly the ultimate modern digital SLR with the typical controls of most high end cameras today.  With so much automation available the camera is covered with switches, dials and buttons but the basics are still there.  A manual focus ring for those who want to use it on the lens, and a dial on the front for aperture and a dial on the back for the shutter speed; with this being an electronic camera, if your not happy then you can swap round what the controls do.  Buttons for drive modes, the main program and semi program modes such as fully auto, shutter priority, aperture priority and finally manual for those who want it.  With it being digital you also have controls for ISO and White Balance.  While seeming very complex its actually very easy to use, the best of these would be the Canon 1D , 5D, the Nikon D3/4, D800.  All the control you need easy to get to, but they are big and heavy, compromised slightly in there image quality compared to Medium or Large Format, or even the simple lens designs in a 35mm Leica due to the retro focus design of SLR lens in order to accommodate the mirror box, but still the best all rounder.

Generally it seems to be the less you pay the fewer controls you get, with most compacts and a lot of the early Micro Four Third cameras having key controls missing or buried in a sub menu.

My Nikon V1 is much like this, all the key functions are hidden in the menu with just a few mode functions (not the ones you need) easily available.

There are a few compacts and CSC that are now getting better, and the tradition control layout does seem to be making a come back, with Fuji using its traditional control layout of a shutter dial on top and an aperture ring on the len. Most of them even have traditional optical viewfinders.

If I am honest, the traditional control layout while easy to see at a glance whats set on the camera as you pick it up, it not as good as some of the modern electronic customisable systems now available.  With your camera to the eye its not quite as easy to adjust the aperture of say a Fuji X100 as it could be, but the traditional layout is my favourite.

The Sony NEX range while having a terrible menu layout was not my faviorate to use camera, but with the introduction of the tri control layout with the NEX-7 it is now one of the best out there.  Very customisable, allowing you to adjust shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, iso etc, what ever there controls you wish, also with customisable buttons its arguably the best CSC camera yet available.  It needs very little improvement to make not only one of the best CSC’s around but one of the best all round cameras.

Would I buy one, no not yet.  For me the view finder needs to be better (though it is the best EVF currently available) a few button arrangement tweaks, but the biggest issue is the lens, while the 24mm is very good, they cannot do justice to the sensor.

When Fuji released the lens for the new X-Pro1, the 18mm was criticised for being the weakest of the set, but even that lens is better then the best lens available for the Sony NEX range currently.

Camera manufactures need to consider the whole system, its an area that not only new starts like Sony are weak at, Nikon released the Nikon System 1 over a year ago now and where are the fast zooms, the fast primes, the small pancake lens.

When all cameras are to a degree compromised then for me my choices are simple, i’ll take the bad ergonomics of the Nikon V1 but with its very small lens and very fast auto focus, excellent EVF, and if wanted the best quality, i’ll use my Leica M’s, with lens that are un-compromised.  Still if set up time allow and your willing to carry the weight a Large Format Camera cannot be beaten.

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WordPress – Stuck in Maintenance Mode

WordPress is extremely reliable, and far easier then maintaining a standard website.

For the first time these weekend I had an issue with it.  I have a test site which is a duplicate of my main site, and whenever I upgrade a plug-in or WordPress itself, then I test first on my dev site.

I needed to update a plug-in on this site but WordPress got stuck in maintenance mode.  A quick web search and I soon found the solution on WordPress’s support section.  When the site goes into maintenance mode it creates a file in the root directory called “.maintenance”, this prevents the site being accessed or administrated, in order to login again you need to ftp into your site and delete this “.maintenance” file.

As with most things easy when you know how.