The West Ring

This afternoon I was working on the lighting in our second bedroom, putting in a remote dimmer [/posh]. I know that I had switched the upstairs lighting circuit off and tested the fact. But when a light comes on as you’re elbows deep in the ceiling rose, it’s bit of a shock! (Yes, :groan: at the pun…)

Turns out it was Lexi nudging the new touch sensitive bedside light! :phew:

… but it was worth it Mind you, it was my own stupid fault for not believing the sunrise time on Metcheck I wanted to try out my new tripod on the sunrise so decided to go out without the hounds. I was on my way to Hankley when I saw the reflection of the sky in Thursley Moat Pond so turned around and parked up.

It would seem that my brain hadn’t woken up yet because I was out-foxed by my tripod… I was disappointed to find that the legs only extended once, which meant I spent the entire morning kneeling down. In my defence the other extension isn’t obvious! (It’s one of those twist to unlock ones, and doesn’t have clips. I’m not quite THAT useless!)

Luckily, I noticed the ISO was on 800 before taking too many pics. (Wondered why the shutter speed was so fast… ) After taking a few shots and looking at the histogram I saw that there wasn’t anything in the right hand third indicating it was waaay underexposed. I realised that it was time - I had to be brave and use the manual mode I did enjoy playing with the aperture and shutter speeds to get the correct exposure. I even had a go at deliberately under exposing slightly but haven’t had time to investigate how well it worked.

I’ve only had time to do a quick cull and play with one of the early shots in Elements. I think there are some that are pretty good, even if I do say so myself! But as a teaser here is the one I’ve had a play with:

The cropped original

The tweaked one (light tones -100)

Any preference? The above tweak was deliberately extreme for my benefit. I know that something in-between might well be the best choice.

My plan is to try and post up some of the others every couple of days or so. I’ve also got some more pictures of the hounds at Hankley from this weekend that I need to go through…

Larger versions available in the Gallery.

I was recently surfing the blogosphere looking for photography related ones and found this post by Brian Auer over at Epic Edits, and thought “Why not?” He’s hosting a writing project on “Social Photography”, and it’s part of a bigger project called “The Social Media Mega Project” hosted by InspirationBit. The idea is to write something about one of the photography based social media sites.

Flickr - it has caused me angst and confusion! I guess that’s not quite the opening you were expecting? Let me explain.

When I first set up my own website it was mainly because I wanted to have my own photo gallery. I had used Fotopic (is that still going?) but was never really keen on the interface. So, I set my own up using Gallery v1 and was very happy with it.

So, to Flickr. I created an account as it was the best way I could find of moblogging to my Blogger blog. (You couldn’t do so directly here in the UK.) Though I didn’t upload many pictures, I was quite happy with the user interface. I especially liked the ability to geotag my photos - it appealed to my (not so) inner geek.

When the time came to change my web hosting provider and rebuild, I agonised over what I wanted to do, and what I wanted out of it. At the time I said that I wasn’t after, or expecting, much traffic. It was only really for my amusement, and something for my immediate family to look at. The main dilemma was whether I built my own gallery when I liked Flickr’s user interface and its functionality. And if I had my own gallery, why would I want to upload my pictures to multiple places? There was also the cost factor - with my own gallery I could have as many albums as I wanted. In the end I decided to stick with Gallery but upgrade to v2, and not bother with Flickr.

The thing is, I didn’t “get” what Flickr was about. Being kinda new to the social web I’m not really “into” it, and nor it seems, are many of my friends and colleagues. My philosophy has tended to be that if I’ve got something that’s worth saying then I will, but otherwise I tend to look, not touch. Even on forums I tend to lurk. But that’s not what Flickr (and blogs) are all about.

Now I’m getting a “feel” for the web 2.0, I find I do want to be included, and I do want other people to look at, and comment on, my work. (This still feels slightly wrong as I’m not the attention seeking type!) Hence deciding to participate in this project and also making more use of Flickr. Since that decision I have had a proper look around it. One of the things I like is seeing pictures taken by specific camera models and being able to see the exif data (if allowed). I also searched on the name of our next holiday destination and it’s confirmed there’s some great coastal scenery. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up vetoing a proposed holiday destination because of the poor photographic prospects! I found a couple of good photos during that search so began looking at that user’s other pictures and even ended up posting a comment! I suppose the next step is to join a group but I’ve not been that brave yet…

I opened by saying Flickr gives me angst, but I think what it really gives me is an opportunity, and maybe in time, inspiration.

For the record, my Flickr photostream is here, though currently low on content!

Back to Hankley with the hounds but in daylight this time. They obliged me by running back and forth, jumping over the puddle. Amusingly, the very first photo is probably the best! We’re not talking perfect focus, but in the smaller sizes I think it works ok, especially with having the reflection there. In terms of focusing, I tried pre-focusing and I think the timing was only slightly off. The bit that confuses me is that the Exif says “aperture priority” but I’m sure I had set it on shutter priority (Tv).

This second shot I like despite Lexi being well out of focus. I think his blur plus the big splash gives a good sense of speed. This is the continuation shot after the above.

Larger versions of the above, plus some others, can be seen in the Gallery.

…has been set! I.E. this is how it was when I knew nothing

Took the DSLR out for its first walk this morning, and a dashed early one it was too. Unfortunately I missed shooting the best view of the sunrise by walking from the car park so you’ve only got this snapshot I’m afraid:

I say snapshot because I didn’t really work on the composition. I didn’t take any more in that direction because I was quite taken by the other view with the moon and sun tinged clouds:

The main benefit of having spent so little on the 350D is that I was able to buy an extra lens now rather than having to save up for it. However, that didn’t mean my budget was boundless so some research was needed.

The two obvious contenders (on price alone!) were from Tamron (55-200mm f4-5.6 and lots of other letters… ) and Sigma (70-300mm f4-5.6). A judicious bit of JFGI-ing found some user reviews and there was a definite consensus in favour of the Tamron.

Later that evening I was flicking through a back issue of Digital SLR Photography (cheers, Stephen!) and found a review of zoom lenses. The Tamron won that test too, so we ordered one. Being, as I am, a novice, it was also useful that intro to the review talked about crop factor, and explained why the 55-200mm was a better choice for most than the 70-300mm.

Don’t expect an in-depth review from me when it arrives next week, though!!

But the memory cards aren’t Had ordered a couple of 2GB Sandisk Extreme III’s from Play on Sunday night and they’ve not arrived yet. Luckily we knew someone who had a spare going, so popped over to see the Outlaws to collect it. All 64Megs of picture storing goodness! So I’ll not be using raw just yet…

Mr Gorgeous, just because!

Sorting through my photographs to upload them to the new (and improved ) website has triggered the desire to do a bit of photography. Not just taking snapshots, which is what most of mine are, but actually to try and take some great photographs. And not just of the hounds…

Not wanting to sound like a bad workman, but I know that to achieve that aim I really need a new camera, specifically a digital SLR. My budget is fairly limited so the obvious starting point was to look at eBay, where I was slightly surprised how well D-SLR’s hold their value. And then I looked at the prices of lenses!

I had been researching furiously during the week, but my biggest problem was not knowing what I wanted! Should I buy a new camera plus kit lens, or go secondhand and get an extra lens or two? And if I were to buy a new one, what make? One piece of advice I had been given by a colleague (thanks, Stephen) was to chose a make and stick with it. That way any kit I buy would be usable after upgrading. After reading various articles on t’interweb I was siding with Canon 400D, but most of them mentioned that the grip was slightly too small for comfort. So, I popped into both Jessops and London Camera Exchange in Guildford on Saturday to get hands on with it and compare and contrast with the Nikon D40x. It has to be said that the grip is slightly too small, even for tidgy-handed me, but it’s not enough of an issue to rule it out.

Once I was back home it was time to jump back on eBay. Still not knowing whether to buy new or secondhand, mind you! I placed bids on a few cameras, but they all went beyond the price I felt comfortable with. The upside of course was the complete lack of auction fever. It was quite heartening to know I was being very rational about it all. After these failed bids we (checking with the boss is always good policy) decided that a new Canon 400D was the right choice. Rather than just going off and buying the nearest available one I compared and contrasted what was available both on eBay and other online stores. Some of the eBay ones were refurbished ones with only 90 days warranty, so they were ignored.

I decided to take a break from it all and went to feed the dogs. In that short space of time, Jennie not only found the Canon Outlet eBay store but spotted, bid on, and won a 350D! Yes, she did actually check with me first, but when I heard the price it was a no-brainer. When I’d previously been looking the 350D was on average £80 cheaper than the 400D, and I had decided the 400D was worth the extra. We got our 350D for £223, and that’s nearly half the price of the newer model! (And no silly postage charges, only £5.99)

Ok, this is actually a refurbished product, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it was broken and repaired, it could just be one that was opened and returned, or a demo. Whatever the reason, it’s been fully checked and has a year’s Canon warranty, so that’s good enough for me! And being that cheap, it leaves me a bit of money for another lens…

I have been making full use of the fantastic new tool within Gallery2 which allows you to publish straight to the web from XP, and uploaded five more albums. It is really simple: highlight the pictures in Explorer and click on “publish…”. Within the wizard that it opens you can create and configure albums on the fly, and have it resize the pictures for you. Brilliant!

Anyway, the pictures are here.

As you can see, I have made changes to the template here for the homepage, despite saying I wasn’t going to yet! However, the change was forced on me I wanted to increase the picture size when blogging a picture from my Flickr account, but it was just too wide for the old template. So, I spent a bit of time looking around at some templates, and found this: Cutline 3 Column Split, by Chris Pearson.

This came with a default set of header pictures, and good though they were, they didn’t fit us. I had a trawl through some of our pictures looking for suitable ones, and quickly created a selection. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I must say that I do like the one on the homepage. I think it successfully evokes the sense (joyous mayhem!) of a walk with the lurchers. The first person to name all the humans and hounds will receive a prize.*

Jennie has also created some fine header pictures one of which is currently in use. I think I’ve read something about a plugin to randomly display them, but I’m not sure whether to look into it as I already have the random Gallery picture. Let me know whether you think I should!

*Remember:- prize value may fall as well as rise.