Titanium anyone?
February 28, 2008
As a mate of mine is only too well aware, I’ve got this sort of obsession with titanium. Mainly as it relates to camping equipment I’d hasten to add.
In fact, he’s rather prone to taking the mickey out of me regarding my titanium cookset, my titanium mug, my titanium tent pegs… oh, I could go on and on. Yet titanium’s a really good metal. Weight-for-weight its about the strongest metal you can get, which means that in most consumer products it represents a significant saving in weight… quite an important consideration for the sort of “rough-and-ready” type camping that I’m into. And I adore its colour! (I’ve even got a Seiko watch that looks like the casing could be made from titanium… it cost enough to be, anyway. And that’s another point. Titanium’s… um… quite expensive.)
It was with great reluctance that last year I had to admit I couldn’t afford at that time to buy a special edition titanium Leatherman (to the uninitiated, a superb - arguably the best - range of utility tools) to replace my bog-standard stainless steel Leatherman. (Reason I couldn’t afford it was of course cos I’ve been squandering my cash on all this camera kit I haven’t got a clue how to use!)
Most recent acquisition (photography-wise) has been a titanium/magnesium alloy tripod, and I’m absolutely certain my mate hasn’t yet exhausted his repertoire of facetious remarks re this. In fact, he hasn’t even started properly yet. I’m waiting with bated breath!
Anyway, I’ve just read that Gitzo are marking its 90th anniversary with a limited-production run of its GT90TT camera, built with titanium, and its planning to release 390 numbered units onto the market with the name “Traveller Titanium”.
Gonna sell for about £1500!
Titanium camera anyone?
Polarizing Filters
February 27, 2008
A friend just recently posted to his blog about getting a polarizing filter. And a coupla days previously he’d asked me if I’d used one on some pics I’d taken (I hadn’t).
All of which served to remind me that I’ve got this nifty little gadget that I’ve hardly ever used lurking in the depths of my camera bag.
Admittedly I had a little bit of a play with the filter when I first bought it, but since then… nothing.
Ok, the weather hasn’t been brilliant generally and I think that to get the best out of these filters you need really sunny weather. But we have had a few nice sunny days yet somehow I just seem to have overlooked this new toy to play with (must be the senility kicking in again… or the whisky’s finally addled my brain!).
Anyway, my friend’s post (and question) prompted me to have a bit of a mess around. Well, the filter I’ve already got was for the Samsung, so I wandered along to my local friendly photo supplies shop and got another one for the Canon (different size lens dammit).
The thumbnails here are a representative selection from the complete experimental set I’ve uploaded to Flickr here.
I’m using the Hoya 0.75 pitch on the Samsung, and Jessops “filter factor 3.0″ on the Canon (the Hoya seems to be better/more effective). Both are of the circular screw-on type.
[Edit: What the hell's "filter factor 3.0" and how does it compare to the Hoya categorisation? Its like buying similar food products from two different producers, one of which is labelled in pounds and ounces, and the other in grams. How the hell are us novices supposed to be able to do a quick comparison? And Jessops should know better!]
Latest Flickr Uploads #3
February 27, 2008
Haynes
Haynes is about nine miles or so south of Bedford and in fact consists of four different small villages or maybe large hamlets… Silver End, Northwood End, Church End, and West End (didn’t quite manage to get to West End… maybe another time).
Its a bit of a strange village in that it stretches across quite a considerable swathe of countryside (its about a 3.5/4 mile walk from one end to the other) yet is actually quite narrow.
I was a bit slow developing any real enthusiasm for this particular session, but I got there eventually. Ended up taking about 200+ shots (though the final edit left me with only about 70-odd!).
Both cameras performed reasonably well (provided I paid close attention to the position of the sun, which stupidly I sometimes failed to do) and overall the quality of the light was superb, enabling me to get some really vivid skies and rich colours.
One minor glitch was that somehow I’d inadvertently set the Canon to ISO 1600 which I didn’t discover till after I’d taken the first half-dozen or so shots. Irritating, as I’ve developed the habit of checking all settings before setting out on a session, so don’t quite know how that happened.
The complete Haynes set is here.
New addition to the Blogroll
February 26, 2008
With a bit of time to spare (waiting for daybreak so I can get out there with the camera) thought I’d indulge a newly-developing habit of mine… browsing the tagsurfer.
Already found a few interesting blogs that way, and this morning I’ve just come across another. So interesting in fact that I’ve just added it to my blog roll.
Basically its
“an interactive clearinghouse for information and advice for college students interested in traveling historic Route 66 for spring break”
Bit of a strange one you may think for someone here in the UK… but, some of the tips there are really useful and equally applicable whether you’re travelling there or anywhere else for that matter (and indeed whether you’re travelling by car or some other form of transport).
Also, the most recent post there describes a project that looks set to produce some really interesting pics. So check it out… Spring Break 66!
Sometimes I despair…
February 24, 2008
… being a night worker I sleep during the day. Just getting ready to go to bed I glanced out the window and caught sight of the sky. And just couldn’t resist the urge to grab a camera, go outside, and fire off a few quick shots. Is there no hope for me?
Bear with me…
February 23, 2008
For the casual visitor to my Flickr photostream it may appear that I take an inordinately large number of pics inside Bedford’s “The Bear” pub. And they could therefore be excused for thinking that I spend a lot of my time in a rather inebriated condition.
Now I’ll readily confess that I’m a tad partial to the odd glass of whisky (or, even better, the Irish whiskey) here and there (and here, and here, and here) but that is not actually the real reason that the Bear’s becoming one of the most photographed pubs in the town.
The reality is that I have connections with that establishment (and the staff and management thereof) going back quite a few years… more than I care to think about in fact.
Consequently whenever I’m in town (usually about once a week) I tend to end up there for my lunch and liquid refreshment (no, not alcohol but coffee… of which I consume prodigious quantities).
And it just so happens that the bar manager there is a close friend of long standing; and that over the past couple of years or so we’ve both, coincidentally, developed an active interest in photography.
Also coincidentally, The Bear just happens to lend itself to photographic experimentation by virtue of the fact that the lighting in there is really unusual and provides an exciting challenge, at least for novices like us. And of course there’s lots of interesting objects to play around with.
Consequently, between the two of us we’re beginning to amass a rather large collection of licensed premises pics. Unfortunately, most of them will eventually end up in the Recycle Bin… one of the most prevalent “issues” with the unique lighting conditions therein is that so many of our pics end up really “noisy”.
(As an aside, I’m gradually beginning to suspect that noise is not as much of a detriment to a photograph as I’d been led to believe. Yes, on some shots its clearly unacceptable but, ever so slowly, I seem to be developing the confidence to assert “I don’t mind about what’s normally regarded as acceptable. I like this!” For it seems to me that some shots are actually enhanced by a bit of noise. And removing or minimising it can have an adverse impact on the overall visual impression.)
Another of the issues that afflicts us is blur due to camera shake caused by a combination of the odd lighting and the impracticality of using a tripod in there… whilst we try to find things to rest the cameras on that’s not viable for many of the shots we want to take.
Anyway, from all the shots of The Bear we’ve taken over the past months we’ve still managed to salvage a reasonable number. And of the shots I’ve taken (as distinct from those by my mate) there are just a few that I really like.
Now the curious thing is, I don’t actually know why I like them. To my eye they all seem to share something in common (aside from being shot in the Bear) but I can’t really determine what.
I didn’t take any of them to achieve a particular effect, or visual “style”. Its just the way they turned out.
If anyone has any thoughts on it feedback would be appreciated.
Theme change
February 23, 2008
Yep, changed the theme again! Previous one didn’t last long at all really, did it? Much as I liked the layout (and particularly the typeface) I found I just couldn’t live with having the “comments” link at the top of each post, and I really couldn’t be asked to tinker around with the CSS.
So, having spent ages (intermittently) sniffing through the various themes, finally selected this one (self-evidently!).
Hope it lasts a bit longer than the previous. Hopefully it’ll be here to stay!
