Rob Roy in the rain

to the distant peak, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Firstly a great weekend in Perthshire, acting as the photographer for 20 work colleagues (including my wife) who were taking part in the Rob Roy Challenge, a gruelling 55 mile hike and bike ride across some spectacular countryside.

This was a great photographic challenge for me. Portraiture, coupled with sports photography and made even more difficult by the very changeable weather conditions, torrential rain in the morning followed by an afternoon of heavy cloud, becoming sunny in the evening – typical Scottish summer weather!

For the first time, I felt really comfortable composing, taking and working with the camera and other people. The feedback I had from the photos was pretty strong and I think I did a reasonable job of capturing people’s experiences. You can see my efforts and judge for yourself on the Picasa site here.

Todays blog shot comes from Dukes Pass, a stunning place just above the village of Callander, made all the more atmospheric by the misty and rainy conditions. This made photography nearly-impossible, the rain kept spooking the autofocus and the above shot was the best I could get, eventually resorting to manual focus. I think it’s a bit soft but the HDR treatment makes it a little more palatable.

I’ll finish on a follow up from my blog post last week on the EP-1. Once again, Olympus completely balls up the release of a new camera, miscommunication and confusion are utterly rife, nobody knows who the EP-1 is meant to appeal to and I think the four thirds system is safe….for now!

I wrote almost a year ago about Olympus’s decision to launch the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) line of cameras. Like many current normal Four Thirds users, I was worried that the Four Thirds line would be discontinued in favour of the smaller system.

It seemed that my feelings were unfounded as Olympus went on to refresh their 4-series with the Oly E-450, the E-30 and the well received E-620. Following the lukewarm reception of Panasonics GH-1 camera, the first to use the Micro Four Thirds technology, I was starting to relax MFT didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

But this week, Olympus have announced the EP-1, the first Oly MFT camera, along with what appears to be at least 2 MFT lenses, a pancake and a 14-42mm walkabout zoom. It looks very, very good and is clearly inspired by the Pen series of half-frame analogue cameras.

Effectively it’s an E-30 in a much smaller form with all sorts of bells and whistles (First Oly D-SLR to have video and the brand new Truepic V processor) that essentially make the EP-1 far superior to anything in the standard four thirds line up. As result, I’m feeling a strange combination of excitement and fear, excitement that people will take the EP-1 seriously and Olympus’s presence in the camera market will be seriously enhanced by the camera, but also fear that Olympus have clearly invested in this camera at a higher or at least an equivalent level to the standard 4 thirds line. It means that the features from MFT will ‘trickle down’ to the Four Thirds users…for some reason I don’t like that at all.

I’m also confused at the cameras position in the market, is it an enhanced compact for a newbie who wants to take the step to an SLR? Surely the price would be prohibitive? (around £700 with a kit lens.) Or is meant to act as a pros backup system? I’ve heard of a number of pros who carry a Cannon G9/10 everywhere with them, a lightweight compact that can take RAW for situations when a massive full frame camera might not be the most effective way of getting the shot. But surely a pro wouldn’t take the natty EP-1 seriously? I wish I knew.

Either way, as my knowledge of photography slowly grows, and my shots get gradually better, I want my next SLR to be around the D300, E3 level of functionality, as an enthusiastic amateur, I want a bigger camera with more power, more processing grunt and more features. I don’t need (or could possibly justify the cost of) a full frame monster but at the same time, I don’t personally want to go any lighter than my current E510. I want to spend £1000 on lenses, not on a new camera body, but…

I’m wondering once again if I should heavily invest in the Four Thirds System. I love my trusty E-510, it’s taken me on a spectacular journey and has made me look at the world differently, but the lure of Nikon is so attractive. The D300 is now in the sub-£1000 price point on ebay, which makes it ludicrously attractive and the sheer range of lenses available makes me wonder and wonder.

The thing to remember is that even with this announcement is that my E-510 still works! I can go out anytime and take wonderful shots. There’s no rush for me to spend anything and I can take as long as I want to make my mind up. Any input into my dilemma always appreciated.

buttercup bokeh

buttercup bokeh, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

It’s been a quiet week in photography land, not much news.

Had a nice weekend, my parents came through for dinner and generally just chilled out. The sun came out for most of Sunday and I decided to capitalise on this rare occurrence by getting down to the river with my camera.

The bright light made things a bit tricky in terms of exposure, but I managed to get the above shot of buttercups by the riverside which I’m pleased about. I just need a third flower with starting with the letter “b” and I’ll have 3…which means I can do a triptych of “b” bokeh shots – this has suddenly become important!

Getting close up shots was one of my photographic new years resolutions, I’m think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Focus is the hardest part, especially when shooting outside and you have wind, insects and assorted other distractions to contend with. The above shot was taken at f3.5 with exposure compensation set at -0.7. I then did a bit of tweaking in Lightroom, I recently found the ‘vibrancy’ slider which is like a super saturation boost and I gave this a nudge to make the yellows pop a bit more along with dialling up the contrast.

I was thinking about cloning out the grass stems that are leaning on the buttercup, but felt they added to the shot so they’ve stayed in. The focus on the flower itself isn’t perfect, but it’s enough to describe the subject, hopefully people will be drawn to the yellow bokeh of the other flowers. At least, that was my intention.

Next weekend we’re off to Perthshire for the Rob Roy challenge, a charity run and cycle that my wife and a team from the office are competing in. I’m going along to take photos so hopefully it’s a good chance to get some more portrait/group/people shooting.

HDR again (on my own...la..la)

the rain comes, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Another good weekend,

Off to Loch Scardroy in the Highlands on Saturday, the weather was incredibly changeable, heavy showers, wind and occasional bursts of sunlight. This made for great, moody shots of the loch – what a change from last weekend which was amazing.

The shot above was a HDR, exposed from a single RAW with 5 jpegs running from -2EV to +2EV blended in the brilliant Photomatix. The workflow from Lightroom 2 into Photomatix is really easy and the versatility you get once into Photomatix is fantastic. After a year of looking at HDRs, I’m leaning more towards a ‘realistic’ type of tone-mapping rather than the crazy ‘surrealistic’ HDRs. Whilst I get less plaudits on flickr for a more realistic shot, that’s just where I am right now…

Interestingly, it was a black and white shot, entitled ‘post’ that went down most successfully with the flickr population, getting more buzz than the shot above. That’s the first time I’ve posted one HDR and one B&W shot, shared them with similar groups and the less processed shot has been seen as ‘better’ than the fancy HDR image. Admittedly, I only get this level of granularity from the flickr pro membership which I’ve only had a week…ach I digress.

In other news, I’ve been looking at the Pentax K7, it looks a lovely camera and the main feature I was interested in was the integrated HDR functionality. It looks cool, but I’ve opted out and am sticking with Olympus. My main issue with the K7’s HDR function is that it appears to output the HDR as a jpeg file…which is a turn off for me because I’d like to see a blended RAW or several RAW files to edit. Despite this, if I didn’t have an SLR, I’d probably go for this camera, it looks innovative and has a very complete feature-set…certainly setting the bar in the mid range SLRs at the moment.

This weekend doesn’t bode well for photography, family dinners and not much planned…still I’ll hopefully get down to the beach or around the river to shoot something....photo's I mean...

Going Postal

posts, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

What a great weekend,

A terrible Friday…my first really bad day at work for about a year resulted in me feeling stressed, dejected and generally useless.

But, the sun was (and is) shining, bringing insanely hot weather to the Scottish highlands, I’ve been in Nairn for a good few years and have never known it to be this hot. As a result we went to the beach for most of the weekend and spent a lazy, sunny couple of days, chilling out and enjoying the amazing weather. Photography with your shirt off is the best way to de-stress!

I got a good few shots, the best of which you can see on my flickr stream. I took the advice from Photofocus of always working at -0.3 on the exposure compensation which worked like a charm, and helped preserve most of the highlights in the shot above. I’ve also got hold of Nik Colour Effects Pro plug in for Photoshop, which is an awesome tool and I’ve had great fun playing with some of the effects. When you combine a HDR with the 'polaroid' output from Nik, some curves, blur and saturation, you get the shot above...which I'm quite pleased with.

I also took the plunge and went pro on Flickr….best $25 I’ve ever spent – I was nearing the 200 shot limit of my free subscription and I’m loving the stats…nearly 5,000 views on my Flicrk photostream…wow.

London (again) this week and then hopefully some fishing at the weekend. Definate camera fodder.

Oh…and if you get time, check out the Pentax K7 preview on dpreview…integrated HDR and movies? Looks interesting and sets the bar high for the Olympus’s E-3 successor which is allegedly in development.