Wiltshire wildlife

 

Some critter pics from a wander in North Wiltshire..  a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly on Gorse bush, Hares in a stubble field and a rabble of fox cubs playing in the twilight (@ISO4000).

 

 

Excuses

Yet again it's been a while since I posted up anything.  Since my last post I've been on holiday to Cyprus and photographed two weddings, so needless to say I have A LOT of image processing to do ... as in 1000+ images to sift, clean, craft, arrange and share to happy couples. 

Really proud to have made it to double figures (10 weddings) just on word of mouth and people liking our photography!  Definitely getting better at most elements with every one, but always watching and learning from online videos such as this one from Mel DeGiocomo... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igaFDx83uc8

Hopefully get some time to process a blog photo tonight before carrying on with the wedding photos .. promises, promises!

Like buses...

Another recommended iPlayer programme from the Beeb, this time about Tim Hetherington (Wikipedia, Gallery) .. war/human rights photographer and director of Restrepo (which I also recommend if you haven't seen it).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b03zq89v/

Amazing man and very interesting documentary.

iPlayer recommendation

While I may not be updating my vid links above, I'm still watching plenty of YouTube and photographic vids.  I will get around to updating the vids and channel links soon.  In the meanwhile, a nice little program on iPlayer at the moment about Albert Watson (Pinterest, Wikipedia)...


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03y85dl/What_Do_Artists_Do_All_Day_Albert_Watson/


.. well worth a watch if you have access to view iPlayer content (imho).


I also purchased a new flash unit, a gentle-on-the-wallet (at least in the short term) .. Yongnuo YN-568EX II.  I've been impressed by the wireless flash triggers I bought from this company so thought I'd try their highly rated flash unit too.   Compared to the Canon 420EX I've been using immediate impressions are excellent - finally manual controls on the back, intelligent E-TTL, high speed sync, fast recycle times at half/quarter power and a tad more output power.  Just have to see how that "Made in China" reputation holds out when it comes to longevity. 

US Tour - Purge

 

 

Whoops.  Left this post behind sat in drafts!?  A bunch more US tour photos...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time flies when it's wasted!

 

Ouch!  More than a month since I posted last?!  Really?  Ok, I guess if I'm scrabbling for excuses I'd include more decorating, some weather nice enough to get some work done in the garden, quite a bit of gym and running (I'm doing a 10k assault course in May!) and planning the next bike tour ... which may well be somewhere East!   Since we've gone South (Morocco), North (Iceland) and West (USA). 

 

Also been buying a few more pieces of photo kit including some more portable flash equipment & attachments that I can travel with, for the wedding in Cyprus next month.

 

Oh.. and I spent a bunch of time re-vamping the wedding website to something I think I'm happy with .. although the current photos are only 800px, so don't look ideal in full screen on a large screen!

 

M & P Photography link

 

What else ... I've calibrated my Sigma 105mm lens, that I noticed was mis-focussing while taking the macro shot below of a moth laying eggs on our wall.  Having keeled over at the price of an official lens calibration tool, I printed this template:  http://www.squit.co.uk/photo/focuschart.html

.. printed, stuck, cut, snapped and custom functioned my lens into perfect harmony with the 5D3.

Note:  On the 5D3 > Go to My Menu, register new entry, Custom Function III - 8 AV Micro Adjustment (Yes, there are tons of hidden custom functions).  Set it to enabled per lens and adjust using the instructions on the link.

 

The bottom photo is a nice hazey, birds flying into the Sunset, dreamy kind of affair.  Straight from camera with a little croppage, I love the hues and layers in the townscape.

 

 

105mm, ISO400, f/8, 1/125s, -1ev, flash, 3 images focus stacked

170mm, ISO100, f/5, 1/8000s, -1.7ev 

Project KFC > BOC

 

Project KFC ... Barn Owl challenge!   Who needs Kingfishers when you have Barn Owls on your doorstep.  Couple of shots taken with hungry Barn Owls hunting in the evening Sunset light after so many rainy days without food.  Barn Owls can't hunt in the rain, so if you thought 10 weeks of rainy weather was getting you a bit down, spare a thought for these guys. 

 

Top shot is manual focussed with the tele-convertor attached for some extra reach.  An extract from a series of shots as it passed in front of me, this one has a few distractions, but the bird stands out thanks to it catching the Sunlight as it banked and includes hints of the farmland habitat it relies on.  The second is without the tele-convertor attached at shorter range, flying over its destination, a field of wild grass perfect for catching up on some small snacks.

 

Ramped up to ISO3200 with some fairly easily removable noise - although Neat Image seemed to cope with removing it better than Lightroom did. 





ISO3200, 560mm (400mm + 1.4 tele-converter), f/8, 1/500s, -1ev, noise reduction, levels

ISO3200, 350mm, f/7.1, 1/400s, -0.6ev, noise reduction, levels

A light in the storm

 

Decorating is coming along and almost getting to the point where I don't have to feel too guilty to wander out with the camera and waste some time. 

Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time anyway, right?

 

This is a shot on the new 5D mark III full frame, wide open with the 16-35mm.  Loving the grasp of this combo, even when you're not trying to stretch lots into the frame.  Taken in Brixham on a rainy day - do we even get another kind of weather in the UK at the moment?  Seems like it's been raining since last summer .. which feels like forever away.  Not only that, but starting to wonder if we're going to bypass winter this year and miss out on any snow & ice photo days!

 

I will clean up and re-fresh the blog this week, get some YouTube channels listed and some new goals for 2014.  Should be another good year (we live on a hill, so no chance of flooding at least)!

ISO100, 16mm, f/5.6, 1/640s, -1ev, circ plrsr (natural vignette - no lens compensation)

KFC 2014 with the 5D3



Quick post to share a shot I grabbed during the floods, a Kingfisher taking advantage of all new fishing grounds - ie.  the local field about 10m from the usual river bank.

Taken with the 100-400mm at full reach and then heavily cropped, I'd like to have said it was skill or at least luck I had to thank, but more practically it's just having more mega-pixels that enabled this image.  Still it was in some quite nice light with diffuse shade, an eye catch-light and some Sunshine to make those stunning colours pop.

 

It did dive and catch a fish, but unfortunately flew to a distant branch with it, throwing shadows and foreground branches in the way.

 

The background is a mess, but at least it is fairly bland in tones, with no colour distractions and has a lot nicer bokeh than with my old 50D.  Happy days.

 

Shot at ISO400 to get a somewhere handy shutter speed, I have reduced the luminosity noise.  Still not impressed by what is supposed to be good high ISO noise control, maybe I should be changing my in camera noise reduction.  Task 1 on my 2014 to do list - learn my new camera inside and out!

 

Spent a few days by the Devon coast last week, so there will be more shots and 5D3 comments at some point this week...



US Tour - American Dreams (More Cars!)

More wrecked old cars from the US tour, given what I consider an appropriate amount of post-processing to help portray the kind of feeling I wanted to capture.  Surprised by how sad some of these decaying cars felt, as some where part of areas that had seen prosperous times 40-50 years ago and are now near derelict, with maybe the remaining residents being the people who drove the cars into town all those decades ago.

The first was in a small town museum, which was just a collection of old stuff that had been donated - I get the feeling a lot of it had probably still been in use until recently.

The second was a near derelict town in the middle of the desert, shot at sunset, to me it captures something of the Americana feel to some of the places.

The third is a huge scrap yard in a town just west of Vegas.  Locked up with lots of "no tourists allowed" - "go away" warning signs, I tentatively took photos over the fence, while the car idled within sprinting distance.



ISO200, 16mm, f/4.5, 1/25s, -1ev - bracketed exposure using lightroom



ISO320, 16mm, f/5.6, 1/25s, -1ev, circ plrsr, levels, curves 



ISO100, 16mm, f/9, 1/200s, -0.7ev, curves, over-sharpened (on purpose), cropped

US Tour - Critters

 

No bears or mountain lions, but a few animal shots from the US tour ...

 

 

Condor, Grand Canyon
ISO1600, 560mm, f/8, 1/1000s, -0.3ev, teleconvertor, noise reduction

Ground Squirrel (not a Chipmunk)
ISO500, 560mm, f/8, 1/800s, -0.7ev, teleconvertor, noise reduction

Another squirrel posing
ISO200, 360mm, f/5.6, 1/500s, -0.7ev, noise reduction

Condor flying over Grand Canyon
ISO100, 310mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, -0.7ev, cropped

Coyote, waiting for food by a tourist spot
ISO100, 180mm, f/5.6, 1/1000s, -0.7ev, cropped 

Merry New Year - 2014

Merry new year to everyone and anyone who stumbles across this post!

Best wishes for a smooth & straight (but amazing) road to the horizon of 2014.

.... and yes, my new years resolution is to take more photos and blog more often! (again) 



ISO100, 16mm, f/7.1, 1/250s, -0.6ev, circ plrsr

US Tour 4 - Grand Panoramas

Three more images from the US tour, this time Panoramic format composites of the Grand Canyon.
We toured all around it, but all these are from the south rim, when we had quite a lot of mist, cloud and heavy showers passing through .. a relatively rare event.  It was all sunny by the time we got to the north rim and the vistas were just not as dynamic.

Really like the lower two, but the huge 2nd pan is definitely my favourite with the sunlight casting all kinds of interesting light in and around the vast landscape, from shadow to light rays to touches of highlights on the right, it "reads" really well. 

The third was taken with the advantage of being able to stay until Sunset, once most of the tour buses had headed off.  The storms that had closed parts of the National Park earlier (wandering desert cliff-tops isn't healthy in a thunder storm), had drifted away to the north east horizon, providing a fantastic backdrop sky to the glowing canyon walls, which were all the more warm tinted thanks to the cloud of hair spray and diesel fumes that linger over Los Angeles to the west.  I also love the hazy light in the left of shot too, which retained a lot of natural light and detail - often you would have needed to lighten this artificially, but I guess the grazing Sunlight must have been being diffused off of the clouds and cliff face.  Buckets of texture, detail, depth, colour and contrast make it another favourite, even without any real focal point.



Composite of 5 images at ISO100, 16mm, f/11, 1/80s, -0.6ev  

Composite of 12 images at ISO100, 32mm, f/9, 1/50s, cir plrsr, highlights reduced in Lightroom 

Composite of 4 images at ISO400, 35mm, f/10, 1/80s, -0.6ev, circ plrsr

Homage to Ansel Adams

 

A few more shots from the US tour while I'm decorating and doing the whole Christmas thing.  Hardly had a chance to play with my 5D3 since I got it, thankfully these US photos were already processed for the most part and ready to post.  The top three are a humble attempt at a salute to Ansel Adams or more like a mutual sharing of the awe that Yosemite national park afflicted both of us, a truly stunning place that I could easily spend a lifetime photographing. 

 

The 4th and 5th are from the Grand Canyon national park, usually it's a sacrilege to remove the amazing colours, but I think these two particular shots benefit from the removal of the distraction of colour.  Note that I have more canyon shots to follow that will be complete with magnificent colour, they will appear at some point soon. 

 

 

 

ISO200, 35mm, f/9, 1/320s, -0.7ev, circ polariser (whoops, not sure why not ISO100) Cropped. 
Yosemite National Park, for once some midday Sun wasn't a terrible thing, casting shadows on the mountain face and highlighting the textures

ISO100, 35mm, f/7.1, 1/160s, -0.7ev, cropped
Morning Sun rays radiate through the rising mist and trees in a fleeting display of natures subtle beauty.  Spotted while driving into Yosemite Valley, I had just barely enough time to pull the car over, run 100m back down the road, take the photo and then it was gone.  Perhaps Usain Bolt might have managed a nicer shot, but I was happy with it.

ISO320, 130mm, f/8, 1/250s, -0.7ev
Not particularly my favourite shot, but a nice reminder of Ansels use of the rising moon in several of his images.  The original, taken at Mammoth Lakes, had crazy colours so vivid it was hard to keep from turning it black and white, to avoid the wrath of the many members of the Photoshop inquisition incorrectly murmuring "hhmmph, too much saturation".  Fortunately I like it's simple composition in mono anyway.

ISO100, 16mm, f/5.6, 1/250s, -0.7ev, circ plrsr
 An Eagle soars over a cloudy Grand Canyon, hopefully happy in its realisation that its living the dream!
The grazing sunlight, epic horizon-scape and passing model all make for a very imagination provoking image, for me anyway, but then I always dreamt of flying as a kid.   It was immediately tempting to break out the max-zoom with these guys drifting past, but it was so hard to capture the magic of such a vast environment with limited background, so I much preferred this than any of my 400mm captures. 



ISO100, 200mm, f/71, 1/500s, -0.7ev
Flipping the previous caption on its head, sometimes the best way of capturing an element of such a complex and huge landscape is with a zoom.  So swapping the usual 16mm for some zoom, I took this shot at close to sunset.  I'm always attracted to this style of shot in the UK, but usually with rolling hills, gates, trees and tractors, turns out the Grand Canyon is slightly different than Wiltshire ... and almost as beautiful!   ;o)



Canon 5D III First Impressions

Bit of a wordy post to give first impressions on my upgrade from 50D to 5D mark III.  I actually got a chance to wander with it and take a few photos yesterday, so I thought I'd hold off on more US photos for now and jump to some all new ones .. even if they are kind of experimental, to test the features and how it likes working with my lenses.  (Photos posted full size)

For the most part, as it turns out, my lenses seem to have breathed a sigh of relief!  No longer restricted by the apparent limitations of my trusty old 50D, the difference is pretty amazing, my 16-35mm II definitely feels a lot more at home.  Super wide is now properly super wide and 35mm just looks ... like a 35mm lens should, really looking forwards to using it on this camera.  16mm gets quite a bit of fisheye distortion and chromatic aberration in the corners, but Lightroom seems to do a pretty good job of countering it using its profiled lens corrections.  (See the tree photo for a wide open 16mm shot with high contrast edges and corner detail).  

The 100-400mm has obviously lost a significant chunk of zoom (full frame sensor vs 50D's smaller sensor with 1.6x "zoom"), but the images look so much better and seems to have alleviated the niggles that I believe plagued its relationship with the 50D (fringing and ugly bokeh).  I'll need to use it a bunch more to confirm though. 

One un-expected bonus is that auto-focus now works with my tele-convertor attached!  I think it only uses the live-view style contrast based (?) focussing, rather than the normal auto-focussing system, but it seems to get somewhere close pretty quickly, which is really handy. 

Physically the body feels very similar in size, almost exactly the same as the 50D, maybe a touch heavier, but the first major difference is the power switch has strayed over to the top left, from the bottom right, which will take a while to get used to.  I'm not even sure I like this either, as instead of being under my right thumb I now have to move my left hand off the camera to turn on/off - irritating if I want to turn off to change lenses in  a hurry etc.    The rest of the controls are fine, a few more buttons to learn, back button focusing sorted, loving the configurable buttons, zooming on images using the back screen is totally different and is also going to take a while to get used to, but like some of the measures they're added to stop settings getting knocked, with locks and more protection against eg. accidentally scrolling the dioptre adjustment or mode dial.  The depth of field preview button is in a great position too, after five years I never did get used to finding that button smoothly on the 50D, but sits happily straight under my ring finger on the 5D3, happy days.

The 100% viewfinder is a luxury I knew I'd love, (no going back now!),  spoilt.  So clear, bright and I finally have a battery indicator in the viewfinder!  (stupid little thing that I always wanted for weddings).  All those auto focus points to choose from too!  Brilliant.  I set the M-Fn button to swap focusing modes and have been playing a bit, seems to work great, but I really need to learn which mode to use when after relying for so long on single spot weighted focussing.  Demonstrated in the photo of the swans, I had been trying out the zone focussing on cyclists riding past (camera focuses on the nearest spot in whichever zone you have active), which worked brilliantly on the cyclists, but when some swans swam through a patch of light in the river it (correctly and very accurately)focused on the wing rather than the eye.  Doh!  I ended up doing this a couple of times, with a Blue Jay in a tree (focused on the branches) and a squirrel while crouched (focussed on the leaves in front), so its something I really have to get used to switching to for isolated subjects.

High ISO is .. interesting.  I haven't been blown away by its high ISO noise handling so far and it seemed a little keen to ramp up the ISO into the thousands a bit too readily I thought, but I probably just need to get used to it though.  See the streetlight at night photo for an example of ISO4000 image with no noise reduction.  Just happy to trust that it is a lot better the 50D was, but a little disappointed that I'll probably still have to de-noise wedding photos taken above ISO100.

Anyway.. I have to go for now .. more to come soon (along with some more US photos at some point!?)

ISO4000, 35mm, f/28, 1/30s, -2.7ev - example of high ISO noise (no noise reduction)

ISO100, 16mm, f/6.3, 1/100s, -1ev, lens correction (Adobe Lightroom)

ISO100, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/320s, -1.7ev  Example of 100-400mm lens sharpness and bokeh/smoothness

ISO320, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/320s, -0.3ev, Example of when not to use zone auto-focus (was playing with different modes and it focussed on wing instead of eye).  Very nice auto-exposure, bokeh and background water though  ... and auto-focus on the wing is very good too - shame about the rookie photographer! 

US Tour 2 - More Mono!

Three more of my favourite shots from the US tour and yet more photographs that I deemed more suited to the black and white persuasion.   Not for any weird colour reasons or to make up for a lack in other areas, but just because they all have great light, shadow, texture and details.

More evidence that when travel shooting you just need to wander too..  who would have thought that off all the tourist traps, scenic viewpoints and wonders of the world that we saw, that my favourite photo so far is of an old chair!

Any way .. quick word of apology on my lack of posting, official excuse is we are totally renovating the whole house, all in one go, while living in a very badly insulated conservatory - which tends to focus attention on getting decorated and back into the warmth of civilised living.

There is hope however!  I may well have accidentally spent some of our home improvement money on a sexy new Canon 5D mark III DSLR!!!!!   Happy Christmas to me!  I now have officially absolutely no excuse not to produce great quality images (that I get to shrink down to about 1MP to post on blogger!?), but hey it's pretty much my dream camera and now I own it - visions of He-Man style holding camera aloft while shouting "I have the power"!   Now all I need is a green Tiger and my life goals are complete.  ;o)

Grand Canyon Crow
ISO100, 29mm, f/11, 1/50s, -0.6ev
Nice diffuse cloudy lighting, for once a flat landscape is a bonus!

Cabin chair and stove
ISO800, 16mm, f/8, 1/5s, -1ev, levels, curves, dodge, burn
Love this shot, very happy.  Took loads of frames handheld, just to make sure I had one sharp.



VW Auto Repair Shack
ISO100, 18mm, f/10, 1/60s, -1ev, levels, curves, dodge, burn
Always up for taking these kind of images, lots of interest and detail with a nice mystery - what sights did the VW see before it found its end in the middle of no-where.

US Tour 1 - Old cars

Ok, time to get this blog back on the road! 
Excuses:  holiday, time, decorating, work etc etc
Enough of that.. time to get some of my USA tour photos up and posted! 

These three old car shots were taken at various stages of our road trip down SW Route 66, then around Utah, Arizona and California.  Very photogenic and just up my photographic street - pun intended.  Some cloudy skies making for some interesting backgrounds and subtle lighting.  Far too tempting for me to play in photoshop with this type of photograph, I've given each a fairly thorough treatment of curves, levels, vignetting and sharpening. 

More to follow soon...

ISO100, 16mm, f/9, 1/60s, -1.3ev, photoshopped

ISO160, 16mm, f/10, 1/30s, -1ev, photoshopped

ISO100, 16mm, f/7.1, 1/100s, -0.6ev, photoshopped

Marks Wasted Money

After several years of lying back on my existing photography kit, I finally splashed out on a couple of minor purchases!  First off is a pair of Yongnuo RF-603 wireless triggers - poor mans pocket wizards.  These should kill two birds with one stone for me, being both wireless shutter release - handy for setting up kingfisher setups without having to conceal myself within cable distance of the camera, but also wireless flash triggers too - although they aren't TTL, I know they'll be really handy.  Will at some point, if they work out as decent as most reviews rate them, buy a couple more so I can do both at once (trigger shutter and flash) or with multiple strobes once I pick up a 2nd speedlite.  Time will tell how much use they get, but initial impressions are good, especially for the price.

 

 

Second purchase was on a copy of Lightroom 5 to sort out my RAW processing issues.  I have been switching between a bunch of free and low cost RAW convertors (and Photoshop CS3 Camera RAW Plug-in) for a while now, with my favourites being Scarab Darkroom and RawShooter Essentials, but never really been completely happy with them.  Not to mention that I have been conscious that their lack of features has driven me to compromise how I run my workflow, I have been looking at getting a copy for a while.  With Adobe switching future products to a subscription model and me being a bit of a cynic when it comes to this kind of "progress", I went ahead and wasted some cash on an old fashioned boxed copy.

 

 

The three photos posted here have been processed entirely in Lightroom, with no Photoshoppery.  It'll take a while to get going on the more advanced features, but most features seem nice and intuitive.  I especially like the quality of the built in luminance noise reduction, I haven't compared to my old friend Neat Image yet, but it would definitely be handy for de-noising masses of high ISO photos - like the wedding I'm due to shoot in a couple of weeks.

 

Whether I splash out on a new body with better high ISO performance while I'm in the USA next month - I haven't decided yet, we will have to see ...

Rain Pigeon
ISO1600, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/640s, -0.6ev

Tree Portrait
ISO200, 24mm, f/10, 1/30s, -1.6ev

Jurassic coast storm
ISO100, 16mm, f/10, 1/125s, -1.3ev