Just a few Snaps taken with my Nikon V1 as the Torch came past my office.
The Olympic Torch Arrives in Lincoln
Equipment Choice
A lot of amateurs only have one camera, often believing its ‘The Best’.
For those of us luckily enough to have more then one body, we get to choose the best camera for the job at hand.
Tomorrow the Olympic Torch arrives in Lincoln, I have other work to do but I hope to be able to get a shot of the Olympic Torch coming past.
With commuting by Bike, my camera choice is somewhat limited, but also the choice of camera should be driven by the subject and what suits it best.
The Bike Commute Advantage
This week the Olympic Torch reaches Lincoln.
While a great event it will cause some major issues for commuters. The Police have recommended that people who do not want to attend leave the city by 16:00.
Well that might be fine for some, but what about the workers, are car park is going to be blocked off, giving car drivers some major issues.
Luckily I’ll be leaving by the car park via the pedestrian entrance, luckily the bike will just fit.
More Positive Fuji X-Pro1 Reviews starting to appear
The Fuji X-Pro1 certainly made an impact when it was announced, but many of the reviews have been less then stellar. Two major concerns; processing the RAW files has proved difficult, lets hope Fuji engages with companies like Adobe and other software companies that produce RAW developers. The second concern has been the autofocus speed.
I am more hopeful for the latter, the Fuji X100 was also very poor at focusing, but regular firmware updates has since improved this and many other areas where the camera initially fell short.
One thing that many people wanted with the Fuji was for it to act as a cheap Leica M body. Well unfortunately focusing manual lens is difficult, if your after a cheaper body for your Leica M class then for now look at other cameras.
For two different views of the Fuji, check out:
If your after a body for your Leica Glass and cannot afford an M9, then the current top contenders are the Ricoh GXR, the Sony NEX-7 and do not discount the Leica M8 or the even better M8.2. While there are issues with the colour; Auto white balance is poor, and the over sensitivity to infrared can be a problem for colour shooters, unless you use filters, but this can be an advantage for Black & White fans.
Lincolnshire Show 2012
This week has been the annual Lincolnshire Show.
The county show lasts two days. Yesterday we had fantastic weather and the show events in the main and secondary arenas could be enjoyed to the full.
We had show jumping, heavy horses, Knights in Armour, jousting; as well as many other things to see.
Today the weather was not so good. In fact we had heavy rain showers through the day, but it was still very enjoyable. We’re British! Stout boots, heavy rain jackets, and a good hat was the order of the day.
It did mean I did not manage a lot of photography, but we did have fun going round many of the indoor stands. Many things to see as well as the usual farm animals, we visited the local Bee Association tent, and met many familiar faces. The honey and lemonade was quite a food highlight.
As well as Bees we are also interested in keeping Chickens, so a visit to the Chicken tent was a must. A spectacular mix of breeds, who knew you could get so many different breeds of chickens!
Of course with it being the County Show we also visited the tent of the WI (Women’s Institute), I am not sure I got all the competitions but the floral displays were very impressive.
We finished the day on a high, with the falconry display, the highlight being the Peregrine Falcon.
Memories in Light
Some of my most precious memories have been of summer evenings, either enjoying the stars come out in the sky or a memorable sunset.
Tonight as we rode home across the flat land of Northern Lincolnshire we had low dark clouds filling the sky, but in the distance we had a band of bright red as the sun sank below the clouds illuminating them from below.
As the sun set the industrial water cooling towers along the banks of the river Trent were shown in bright contrast against the brilliant red and orange of the sky, it was quite a sight and one with lots of potential for a stunning sunset.
As we continued to ride home a flash of white to the side of us revealed itself to be a Barn Owl, and as we continued our twisting ride down the country lanes, sudden busts of bright orange light would break across the clocks on the motorcycle we were riding into the growing gloom.
A memorable ride.
A Warm Commute
A warm sunny commute into the office today, that certainly made a change. Lets hope the weather stays nice till the end of the week as its the County Show this week.
The last few times I have been to the Lincolnshire Show, I have been working there but this week its for pleasure. If I get any good photographs I’ll post a few up on Thursday night.
Still even if its raining, a good time can be had, I’ll take my Wellington Boots just in case.
Nikon Reaches 70 Million Nikkors
The big news this week was that Nikon reached the 70 million mark in there lens production history.
To mark this they also released two new lens, one DX for those of us who have DX Cropped sensors and one 35mm full frame lens.
For the DX users we have the new 18-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. A travel and all in one lens. Interesting but not for me.
For the full frame users, a new 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR. A useful midrange small zoom for full frame users, not sure of this is going to appeal to the D4, D800 users, it does not look to have the image quality required for these bodies, maybe this means a budget FX body is on the way?
Sharpening: Input, Creative and Output
I always thought sharpening was a relatively straightforward process, but I have seen some rather heated discussions on forums, people confusing input sharpening, output sharpening and of course creative sharpening.
As mentioned above people generally divide sharpening into either two or three stages:
- Import Sharpening (also known as Capture Sharpening):
The aim of this is to restore the sharpness to the image that is lost during the image capture. - Creative Sharpening
This is selective sharpening added to key parts of the image, such as the eyes in a portrait. - Output Sharpening
Different media require different levels of sharpening. Sharpen an image for best results for a computer screen and it will look poor and soft on a small print. Sharpen for a small print and it will look awful and gritty on the screen. Different sizes of print will also need different levels of sharpening. Sharpen so it looks good on a 8.5 x 11 inches and it will not look right on a print 13 x 19 inches.
Why do we need to sharpen? A digital image is of course a pixelated image. Adjacent pixels may be the same but they may be very different. The camera tends to average out adjacent pixels that are very different in order to reduce the amount of apparent pixelation.
What sharpening does is increase the amount of edge contrast, basically it lightens the light side of the edge and darkens the dark side. Good sharpening software will only do this on the luminance values of the data and not affect the colour information.
There is not one set of rules that you can use for sharpening, different images need different settings. All I can advise is that you shoot RAW, don’t let your camera choose the sharpening level, and use a good third party sharpening tool. For import sharpening the best two are Adobe Lightroom and Camera RAW which is built into Photoshop (actually they are the same underline code and RAW development engine).
Creative sharpening can be used to highlight key areas. In the above shot import sharpening has been applied but also in the post production a reduction in mid tone contrast which has the result in softening the image slightly, this was done even more heavily on the skin town to make the skin look softer. The eyes, lips and hair then had there mid tone contrast increased and those areas selectively sharpened.
Finally, output sharpening, this adds the sharpening needed to suite the output media, above I used a relatively high for screen setting. If the output was for print it would have to go even higher and would look decidedly crusty on-screen.
WWDC 2012 and Retina Macbook Pro
This week is Apple’s Developer conference and in the opening speech yesterday as well as the Software announcements was the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, this could be excellent news for Photographers.
Not so sure about them dropping the Firewire Ports but they did say a FW to ThunderPort Adapter will be available so Photographers like me with lots of external FW drives will not feel left out.
I have to admit I am tempted as my MacBook Pro is now four years old, if I upgrade to a Nikon D800 this year then the new MacBook Pro will be an essential upgrade. Until then I can wait. I’ll be interested in how shiny the new display is as well as the Colour Gamut.
It would be nice to be able to do colour critical work on a laptop, but i’ll not hold by breath.