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Tablet Market – Sony gets interesting

Sony have always been a company to admire, producing some interesting designs over the years.  I have a Sony TV, Sony PVR, and for a long time was interested in the Sony P Series mobile phones.

Over the years they have produced a number great products and have now entered the Android Tablet Market with the Sony Tablet S and P models.

I was hopeful that the HP Tablet running WebOS and RIMs new Playbook was going to give Apple some competition, now it looks like Sony are going to be taking up the challenge.

From a photographers point of view unfortunately they don’t offer any real advantage over Apples iPad.  Maybe the next version.

A quick review from a photographers point of view is here at Luminous Landscape.

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Motorcycling after a break

BMW R1100S

I keep finding that I am saying to myself, “Its a funny old year”. The context of this has been my lack of motorcycle riding.

It rare that I don’t find myself in the saddle of one of our bikes at some point during the day.

This year has been different, due to ill health at the start of the year I spent a couple of months unable to ride. Last week it was just sheer lack of time. We both took the week off and spent it decorating the house. So the bikes spent the whole week stuck in the garage.

Today was our first day on them again. Once on the open road, I soon noticed I was a little rusty so took it careful as I slowly increased my pace.

This made me wonder this week how people manage, who don’t ride through the winter. In England most motorcyclists only ride for six months of the year. Then each spring we have the usual huge spike in road accidents. If only people could be persuaded to ride either all year round or to take it easy for the first month or so. But I suppose if you only ride six months a year then tootling around for the first month or so could not be tolerated.

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Coffee – Coffee Makers: The Chemex

As I have in the past mentioned I love the finer things in life.

Good Coffee, good wine, good whisky and good chocolate. This week I have been indulging in my coffee habit again, not with more coffee but much to my wife’s displeasure a new coffee maker, to join our growing collection of French Presses, Coffee Percolator, AeroPress and Expresso and Filter Coffee machine’s. Its not like she dislikes my coffee habit, its just the sheer number of coffee making devices and different styles of coffee cups littering our kitchen. I had to admit we did not really have room for more!

The problem was since buying the AeroPress for work, I had become somewhat spoilt. It really did make one of the best coffee’s I had every tasted at home. It really make my filter coffee machine seem poor quality. I enjoy a French Press at home but sometimes you want something with a little more clarity, that lets the clean notes of the coffee shine through, and a French Press just cannot do that.

From frequenting a few coffee internet forums (yes I really am that sad), I quickly learned that for the cleanest cup of coffee you need either a vac pot or a Chemex. Well a Vac Pot I feel is something for later, so I went and bought a Chemex from those lovely people at Hasbean Coffee.

My first attempt yesterday was nothing special, while better then my filter coffee machine I felt it was not as good as the AeroPress. Well after a search on Youtube for different ideas on using this type of Brewer, I had another go this morning. This time I nailed it. Possibly the best filter coffee I have ever tasted. Though the excellent El Salvador San Rafael Bourbon 2011-2012 may have helped.

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Being Fashionable

I recently read the new iPad Magazine Light It, there was some interesting techniques and generally it showed techniques that are currently in fashion.

Single Light

Today I looked at a very old lighting techniques book.  I bought it many years ago, and it was written in 1940s.  Some of the rim lighting techniques and back lighting techniques that it goes through are actually now back in fashion.

We may have moved from taking portraits and fashion shots on large format film cameras, to medium format, then 35mm SLR, to now our modern medium format and SLR digital format cameras but the actual techniques have not really changed.

I have to admit, if money was no option I would love something like the Leica S2 for Studio use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would also love a large format camera.  I have used one in the past and it really slows you down and makes you think.

If you want one try www.robertwhite.co.uk

What ever you use, Large Format, 35mm, film or digital, enjoy yourself.  Now off to shoot some fun snapshots with my camera phone!

 

 

 

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Models Required

Well its nearly the end of August, and I am now finalising my bookings for September.

I shoot the odd wedding, but these are always booked up to a year in advance, in fact I was booked up to September 2012 by April this year!

Now the photo bookings I am currently working on are my personal projects.  If your a local model and up for a dawn shoot on the beach let me know at enquiries.

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Photography Trip to Whisby Nature Reserve


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Caroline wanted to try out her new bird spotting scope, so we took some of the family including Alan with his Sony A55 and tripod off to Whisby Nature Reserve for the afternoon.

We started off with a nice meal there, venison for most of us, then headed off to the nearest hide.

August is not the best season for bird spotting but we had some luck, apart from the usual pigeons and Seagulls, we spotted a Heron, Coots, Moorhen and some Comorants.

Alan soon learnt that even a 300mm lens is a small telephoto for bird photography.  We had also taken a selection of tripods, a mix of cheap legs up to decent medium quality professional gear.  Caroline quickly learnt that even if your not taking photographs a cheap tripod will soon drive you to distraction.

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Light It – iPad Magazine

The new photography magazine Light It, has been released, from the Kelby Media Group, its a great magazine with light tips for all levels.  I downloaded it yesterday and really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately instead of getting praise for introducing another means of reaching photographers, all they seem to be getting is hate posts by iPad nay sayers.

Kelby Media Group provide printed magazines, internet videos, pod and web casts, seminars (and not just in America), books and DVD’s and now an iPad magazine.  Lots of different ways to reach photographers, whether you have a computer or not, and plenty for none iPad owners.  Yet all it seems people can do is complain.  How dare they produce a magazine for the iPad.  How sad, why cannot trolls get a life.

Now where did I put that CTO Gell, I want to try that sunshine camera flare technique!

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2011/archives/21059

 

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Compact Camera’s

Yesterday was Nikon’s much waited for press conference. Rumours abounded about new full frame cameras; the D4, the D800; even a brand new interchangeable mirrorless lens system.

Instead we got more compacts.

The Sony announcement was much more interesting. The new enthusiast / professional NEX7 was quite a revelation.

With the Leica M9, Leica X1, Fuji X100, Panasonic GF and Olympus Pen range; and of course now this, we have a number of large sensor Compact Cameras where size does not necessarily have to mean less image quality.

My criteria is interchange lens, high quality prime wide angles and a decent view finder.

As always I’ll be waiting till I can test one in my hands, but the new Olympus Pen 3, and now this are at the top of my lists.

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Lightroom Performance Tweeks

I have been doing a bit of reading recently, on optimising Adobe Lightroom to get the best from it.

One thing you can do to help, if you have the disk space available, is to increase your Adobe Camera RAW Cache. This will make your Develop module that little bit quicker when you start to use Develop.

The Lightroom previews used by the Library are different to those used in the Develop module. The Library previews can be generated on import, or when your first zoom into a 1 to 1 view.

Develop uses a different cache and this cache by default is set to 1GB. Now most of use can spare more disk space then this and its well worth increasing. On a desktop machine the up to 200Gb is commonly used by many photographers. If your working on your laptop then space often at a premium so 5 – 15Gb is more common.