And now for something completely different...

Something of a departure for me: a video post! Film making has never ranked highly on my creative list, preferring the power or beauty (or both) of the still image to get my point across, but now that I have the ability I feel it okay to dabble on occasion, if only for a bit of fun.

To be accurate, the above clips are the result of time lapse photography and not real time action, and I achieved this with a DSLR. This is one function that would be next to impossible to create on film stock (for those out there who maintain that digital capture is still just a passing fad - you know who you are), with the same type of camera. Interchangeable film backs are available to take the required amount of images to produce anything more than a fleeting glimpse on-screen (a bulk-film 750 exposure (35mm) specialised film back for Nikon cameras, for example), but imagine having to scan all those negs/trannys to get them onto a computer's hard drive. Time consuming, or what?

Oh, how I danced around the room when I first read the specs of my first serious digital camera (Nikon D200), that included an intervalometer function, but that merriment was short-lived when I realised that I had no suitable software to process the final images. It took the recent move to Adobe Lightroom 4 to realise that potential and get my thinking (shooting) cap on.

I did have a tentative stab at this technique two weeks ago, but it is the low tide and changeable weather at Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset, that spurred me on to try something a bit more watchable. I am still very much at the experimental stage, but as ideas come to me I have every intention of including such methods in my photographic compass.

I have included a link on the right for better viewing (in YouTube), and any future clips.


24-70mm f/2.8 AF-S Nikkor lens. Manual everything - focus; exposure; white balance. ISO 200. Tripod.

Top: 700 images - one every 5 seconds - 1/250 second at f/11
Below: 999 images - one every 2 seconds - 1/400 second at f/11




© 2013

Dungeness...

Although a great deal of fuss is made about the weather in the UK, there are times when good conditions are paramount for certain activities: hot air balloon flights, for example. Scheduled for Wednesday evening, the gusty wind conspires against Nic and I getting airborne despite clear skies and the flight is postponed, having made the necessary information phone call at 2pm. We will try again in a couple of weeks.

                                                                 **********

The following day we set off for Dungeness, on the Kent coast, for some photography. If anything the wind is far stronger than yesterday, but there is no cloud (or tempting cake in the café at the light railway station), and we spend a couple of hours roaming the shingle beach adjacent to the nuclear power station, shooting whatever has been either abandoned as a wreck or simply pulled up above the high tide mark.

I shoot everything with a polarising filter on the lens but thought that the images worked better in mono.



12-24mm f/4 AF-S Nikkor. Polarising filter. Mono conversion in Lightroom 4



© 2013

Looking on the bright side...

It has been over a week since I posted on here, but certainly not the first time I have used a camera during that time. I am experiencing a lull on the creative side of things at the moment, so much so that I even deleted an entire day's shooting earlier in the week (not too many uninspired shots, to be honest, but gone all the same).

This was not helped by the return of my 70-200mm lens on Tuesday - recently sent for a clean and service; returned clean but not working to specification; returned a  second time, and received again this week only to find that the front ring of the barrel had not been oriented in the correct position during reassembly. The bayonet-mount lens hood would not lock into place properly as a result, rendering the hood useless.

The company did deal with the problem swiftly once I phoned them to complain, and the optic was returned to me within 48 hours of posting. I am still withholding the name of this facility for the moment as I am in the process of claiming the return postage back since none of this was my fault. Whether I will be able to give a positive or negative review now hinges on this alone.

Anyway, the lens in question got a bit of use this afternoon, along the seafront of Poole Bay, Dorset, just to make sea-sure everything is as it should be - and it is. The strong breeze had one or two kite surfers zipping along on the waves, but the moody light of one such operator preparing for the off produced the best image of the day.



70-200mm f/2.8D Apo Sigma lens. 1/2500 second at f/5.6. + 0.67 EV compensation. ISO 320



© 2013

Positively oozing...

It's another bright start and still cold. The Met Office reveal today that March was the coldest since 1962, and the fourth coldest since records started being kept in 1910... but there is good news! Apparently, things will start to warm up at the beginning of next week. I can only respond to this welcome information with two words: hoo-bloody-ray! Really, winter has gone on long enough.

I'm out with a big lens again, shooting stuff from the local pier. I stop and have a lengthy conversation with another photographer about long exposure shooting (keeping the shutter open for several minutes in daylight and all that entails), and grabbing the occasional opportunity as the sun breaks through the increasing cloud, to make a photographs positively oozing with telephoto compression.







300mm f/4D AF-S Nikkor with TC-14EII converter. 1/1600 second at f/5.6. ISO 400. Monopod.



© 2013

On the beach...

It's a bright day on the south coast, and although temperatures are slowly crawling ever higher it still feels more like winter than spring. I have a couple of hours to fill-in this morning while the car is in the garage for its annual MOT and service (all was well), and what better way to do that than to go for a walk with my camera.

I fancy a bit of telephoto shooting this morning, and wishing to travel light I pick the smaller of the two long lenses I own, but also, on the spur of the moment, add a tele-converter to the bag. More often than not I only use the add-on if I really need to, but today I want to have fun with it.

On reaching the cliff tops along a favourite walk I am immediately presented with the sight of a local kestrel, hovering and flapping on the wind. Unfortunately, it won't come close enough to photograph anything meaningful, and it being positioned so that I am shooting into the light I don't get any shots. However, there is a bit of action  happening on the beach below, and shooting hand-held I produce today's image.





300mm f/4D AF-S Nikkor with TC-14EII converter. 1/3200 second at f/8.  +0.33 EV compensation. ISO 400



© 2013