Recovering

Haven't been too great this week  so sorry if responses to personal messages and that has ben a bit sluggish but I've been coughing my guts up and sneezing somewhat with irritated eyes so really apart freeling off I couldn't look at the screen much.

I did wrap up as I needed to do a lens test before submitting feedback as the one I bought with the Nikon as a kit didn't really fit that well into what normally do needing to cover more moderate telephoto to avoid needing to change lenses over most of the time and I felt the original lacked contrast.

It might be being spoilt with a Minolta film system with marque fixed length lenses that I grew up first  my standards tend to be rather high and I didn't care for anything that that lacks that systems simplicity but it was time to put that right as blogging was what drove to digital photography having bypassed the whole auto focusing slr film era totally.

Anyway I did go out for shortish hike well wrapped up and took that picture that apart from a touch of straighting up has otherwise not been processed and that was more like it.

It proved to be an easier lens to focus by hand on.

New term, new tools

Today officially in this district is the second return to  school day which is a bit different from the norm because usually we would not go back until the first full week in September but with losing a fair bit of studying due to Covid last term and the Queen's Coronation extra day's holiday, the 2021/2 timetable has been rejigged.

The art dept brings a new thing for this term that bridges the gap for when we are out and about exploring and part of the origins of this blog is photography.

The Canon SX 10 IS is an unusual camera that starts with having a fixed 28 to 560mm (in 35 film terms) zoom lens which is rare even within the so-called Super Zooms speciality companies such as Tamron and Sigma make as extras meaning without  changing a lens you can tackle practically any subject you might wish to.

The other thing is not just are the focal lengths marked on the barrel but the mode selector allows both Aperture and Shutter priority auto exposure as well as full manual for more creative control using that lens to say blur out distant objects or waterfalls.

You will note it even has a hotshoe for a Canon Speed-lite flashgun like a DSLR  has.

The rear panel isn't especially complicated for all that but it has both an electronic viewfinder like a DSLR with in effect a miniscreen fitted you view through but also a fully tilting screen that helps taking pictures at awkward angles so you can see where the lens really is pointing.

This means you can use it in effect as a mirrorless dslr with no "mirror slam" when taking pictures where you don't want to be heard.

It's a few years old so its resolution is only 10 megapixels but that is more than adequate for printing out to A3 size (and frankly most websites compress the image quality to increase the uploading time) and uses the easily found AA batteries.

It just lends itself to days out when having everything at hand speeds up taking good pictures and weighs less than my Minolta XD7 did with the 75 to 150 F4 zoom fitted.

This weeks round up

 

This week to be honest hasn't been a great week to be out with heavy showers across much of it which has meant a few changes of plans here and a few other things.

I found a box full of slides, I think part duplicates of some black and white print film pictures I too from September of 2006 of trains, the Snowdonia National Park and small villages about I took on my Minolta film camera.

If I remember right, I had two film bodies with me and in effect I swapped over the lenses between the one with Ilford 400 black and white print and the X500 with Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide film which was faster than the in vogue Velvia 50 so more suited for handheld photograph as much as I preferred to use a tripod with quick release plates beneath both.

One day I'll get around to scanning them in as later in before I got my first Digital Camera, I did get scans done while they were being processed and mounted which I then used for blogs.

I did replace a few compact discs with bad marks on from when I had for a short period a cd player that tended to cause discs to overshoot and get stuck causing abrasive marks this week apart from continuing on that Tumblr I mentioned last Friday which is now up to post 700.

Autumn delights while about

This week, it has been a bit all over the place with the weather so sometimes it's been more a case of grabbing hat and shoes when the opportunity arose to venture out  exploring or taking pictures.

This could be me, that schoolboy in his grey shorts and socks holding a few hundred or so's worth of camera gear while out taking pictures and I'll add at least on his Nikon DSLR the input wheel for setting modes and semi automatic auto exposure settings on the front in the right hand grip ala Canon style unlike my D3500 which for some reason puts it at the rear where when hand held it's obscured by your face!

When it all comes together, a great camera, brilliant lighting and autumnal colour it's just magical

Nature and me

Something I do love is nature which probably had something to do with me growing up in the countryside a stones from a diary farm in which district I wrote about November last on here as a young boy.
Before I was away, as is my usual want I did take a number of pictures using my Nikon camera where what I wanted to photograph came very much into view.
One of the things I love about being here is while parts are built up we do have open spaces within that area such as a smallholding used for grazing by various people so we often see various animals such as lambs, ponies and horses.
Indeed many is the time I have seen horses being driven on our estate roads even by people and no one bats an eyelid.

That same interest propelled me while away (see more on Scouting & me) where these delicate species were spotted fully grown in the many layers as I was exploring in my uniform.
Sometimes I sound like a stuck record but for me the past and the present do link into each other, that's to say I explore my boyhood past and explore the present through the same eyes and mindset as that boy with same sense of wonderment and amazement.
It's really what makes this blog different neither nostalgic nor routed in present centredness.

Staying dry but having fun

It has been a bit of damp week although I have been outside for exercise apart from observing the change in the season as we are moving more into Spring proper so I did do a bit of photography this week although it needed to be indoors.

This was one of those I took of a group of flowers illuminated by natural sunlight using the Tamron 90mm Macro lens using a wide aperture to keep a shallow depth of field between the group of flowers I wanted and the remainder.
That kind of control about how one controls a pictorial composition was why I wanted a digital system camera.
That wasn't the only wet day activity either.

While staying dry I recently bought a book by an author I loved during ones boyhood but had not read before in its first edition.
The Family at Red-Roofs is a family story about the Jackson's, four children between nine and seventeen and their mom and dad who living in cramped conditions were able to rent a bigger property that needed some work doing on it.
They acquire a domestic helper called Jennie and all seems well until their mother is taken will needing surgery and quiet respite just at the time gets a once in the lifetime offer to go to America to work for his company and has left.
Worse still it transpires a ship he was one was hit head one by another with few survivors so Jennie has more to deal with after receiving a letter from his company, the children's mother is too delicate to be told and in an age lacking social insurance, it appears they may become penniless. 
Molly and Peter have to find jobs as the oldest even though both before this tragic news of his assumed death would of been studying for careers in Teaching and being a Doctor respectively. Even Michael aged 11 does clock repairs to bring money in.
Molly's former school friend Prudence, a stuck up daughter of a monied family falls on hard times and so needs to stay with them that means for the first time in her life she actually has to work.
What really happened to the children's dad transpires: He was saved but was so traumatized by the incident, he'd forgotten who he was but as luck would have it a photograph of the four children of his floated and is publicized in the national press. 
Dad and children in time are reunited and mother recovers just in time so she didn't need to be told of his disappearance and presumed death.
The story is genuinely heartbreaking in places, the presumption all is going well from moving to a better house soon moves to that of the actual loss of a breadwinner parent and severe illness of their mother and of sacrificing potential careers to deal with pressing needs.
What is good about it is it shows the children maturing, showing resilience that they'll need as adults and upon his return after all, their father sees the fruit of his efforts fathering them in their ability to cope under pressure.

Digital photography 2

The last time I talked about the digital camera system in February, I just mentioned the bit that controls how the pictures are made and the two lenses that cover a wide range of focal lengths that cover taking pictures of mountains to birds to the odd cycling event
This said given some of my interests such as nature there are a few more specialized lenses that do help and it's those I'm talking about this week.
One thing to bear in mind is consumer cameras rather than the Pro models used by magazines and newspapers use a bigger full frame sensor to take the image off the lens compared with that of the smaller DX ones which means the focal length of any lens is effectively increased by a factor of 1.5 (a half again) on a regular model for amateurs like mine.
On a traditional film camera system a lens many of us typically has a focal length of 50mm that shows things very much as we'd see them with one eye shut and typically they gather more light in than most zoom lenses.
This isn't just good for taking pictures in dull conditions but what gives it that light gathering ability - its wide aperture-  also enables you to keep me of what is either side of your subject out of focus which can be more aesthetically pleasing.
It also comes with a hood to keep excess sun off the lens that can impair image quality.

This Nikon lens with an actual focal length of 35mm, thanks to the sensor becomes in effect a 52mm "standard" lens which makes it useful for taking pictures of meadowland where individual blades of grass can be given greater prominence.
As well, being a fixed focal length lens means it has less elements for the light to travel through which shows in better contrast and resolution.

Another type of lens that is useful is a Macro lens which isn't as confusingly some zoom lens call themselves the same because a true Macro lens gives at least 1:2 or half life sized reproduction and not the typical quarter life sized many telezooms offer.

This is a true Macro lens made by the independent lens manufacturer, Tamron in Japan that actually gives you life sized (1:1) reproductions which unlike the earlier version for Nikon cameras, has a built in motor for autofocus on more recent Nikon digital cameras that don't have a built in motor in the camera itself to do this.
Like the other lens this also is more efficient at light gathering having a maximum aperture of F2.8  which with its 90mm focal length increased to 135mm on my camera and very close focusing enables you to both get in close and blur the background of individual flowers or capture very small details.
It has a switchable focus range restricter to limit the area it focus on between 0.29 though 0.40 cm for close up work or 0.46 through infinity for quicker focusing where you can use it as faster medium telephoto lens compared with about F4.5 on the 70-300mm telezoom.
That traditionally is what we bought for our cameras and why I had the 135mm F2.8 one for  my Minolta X500 and XD7 film cameras.
You can use it to photograph tree branches, leaves and also for portraiture too.

These two lenses build on from the twin zooms allowing you more control over what you photograph and higher image quality which make for a simple lens system that covers all my needs.

Eyes peeled

A winter week spent scouting can lead to you noticing things that might ordinary passed you by which is why I believe passionately in (re) learning alertness and observation skills and one example is how there seems to be a unmade trail to this arch of trees.

In what is a very vulnerable section of woodland with a road hidden in the distance not only can you make out the pattern but also is valuable structure.

Here two trees frame effectively the backdrop of woodland.

Here you can see the living organisms in the tree on these two branches that go off in a V like formation.

Surveying the countryside in all its glory in Shropshire with fields and hedgerows in time honoured style (*)

These pictures were taken on the Nikon Dslr apart from * using the aperture priority auto exposure mode that allows quick working at the same time as keeping full control over what either side of the subject is in sharp focus

Digital photography

I did mention just before Christmas that photography was something I had always been interested in to the point I owned a Minolta manual focus film single lens reflex camera system with an collection of very high quality usually fixed focal length rather than zoom lenses that I stayed with bypassing completely the modern  usually plastic auto focus models produced by Canon, Nikon and Minolta itself from the late 1980's into the mid 2000's.
I had been using a Canon zoom compact digital camera for taking pictures for my blog because as much as I love the quality of the pictures my Minolta film slr system takes, inevitably you have to wait for the films to be processed with scans done to use them for blogs so unless it was something special then I'd use the Canon.
Trouble is by design a compact camera without getting very technical give you little choice about how the end picture turns out as it's really designed for point and shoot so all you can do is just zoom in and out the lens and that's it.
What I had been wanting for a long time was a camera that gave me the creative control of my Minolta film system such as control of how sharp things either side of the subject I focused on, the ability to freeze or blur movement and use more specialized lenses.
The inability to use easily my Minolta MD existing lenses on current digital cameras was an added complication.
Fortunately I found a camera kit that was fairly well constructed, not to difficult to relearn basic things like setting shutter speeds as my Minolta had separate controls for such things where most newer camera from the late 1980's used a input dial to set them with that could form a second all digital system without being too expensive. 

The Nikon D3500 is just about the most basic model Nikon do lacking Wifi and attendent GPS and uploading to social media stuff  plus had a basic non touch screen LCD display but had a proper viewfinder which apart from anything else promote proper well supported handling as you look through it while taking the pictures rather than holding the camera in front of you, staring at the screen.
I feel especially in an age where it can be all too easy to track people down NOT having that information by default in your image files and  them automatically uploaded to social media is desirable.
Unlike cheaper Canon offerings like the EOS4000, it does have a metal lens mount so you can use heavier lenses without risk of breaking the mount.

It comes with a so-called Standard Zoom which on this "DX"sensor model works out at the 35mm film equivalent of 28mm for wide angle shots of scenic views to 82mm which is better for taking portraits or groups of flowers with a more natural perspective.
It is a surprisingly good lens of its type having had some real horror stories in my hands over the years so lends itself to more general photography even if it's light gathering doesn't match that of my film cameras fixed length ones. 
That's little different than those I tried in the 90's.
What does help with one consequence of that is it actually has built in image stabilization that keeps camera shake at bay where a slower shutter speed might be needed
There is a small pop up flash that can help for fill in flash although seriously, you cannot bet a separate dedicated flash for decent flash photography being able to direct the flash for less harsh images.

Having got that kit down by a good 25% I was looking around for a telephoto lens for it as in order of usage I tended to use my 135mm moderate one on the Minolta only occasionally using the 200mm or Tamron 300mm and wasn't wishing to have a near duplicate range of fixed length lenses where two aren't used much.
Nikon had in the twin lens kit their 70-300mm which works out at 105 through 450mm in 35 mm film terms but the twin kits were expensive especially as I wanted the one that also had image stabilizing as I find holding soon produces shakes.

As it happened I found a individual who'd bought the kit but was selling of that better version of the lens still in the I wanted in near mint condition as they'd bought another lens tested  but otherwise not used in the field so when you added the camera kit cost and this lens the combination was considerably cheaper

Over the range I'm likely to use it over it will perform well enough for my purposes as again it has well designed with the only economies in the all plastic construction which is quite durable too.

A right angle finder

Sometimes you think and weigh things up for ages and then you realize that's what you really needed.

The origins of this blog were a photography blog for my Minolta single lens reflex camera system that comprised of X500 and XD7 film bodies and matching nearly all MD system compatible lenses bar the MC series 300mm F5.6 from the mid 1970's before support for shutter priority and program modes on the XD7/5 and X700 came in.

That thing I bought recently is the Minolta Angle Finder Vn that came in its leather case and it gets around two basic issues.

The first is many of us don't have perfect eyesight so while we may be able to use the focusing aids such as the split image rangefinder in the focus screen and just about see the settings we can't see the image in sharp focus.

This has a diaoptic adjustment from minus 7 to plus 3 you can set it to match your eyes and put that right.

The other thing is the eyepieces comes out at a right angle making it easier to view when working with camera pointing downwards perhaps on a platform for photographing objects.

Equine adventures

This week I did go out to do a bit of film photography as normally for blogging I tend to rely on my trusty Canon digital compact camera and took these two horses on the Minolta X500 using the Minolta Tele Rokkor 300mm F5.6 MC lens with Fuji Superia 200 film.
I love horses and these two were nearby.

X500 Silver

There are two Minolta's X500's.

This is the Silver one which is more common and in some respects looks more obviously early 80's than it's all black cousin.
No: 60330174

The above is the original 1983 brochure introducing it with the black version shown coupled to the motordrive, a fast winder popular with professional and advanced amateurs into wildlife or sports photography.

In  coy way  the brochure  spells out just what makes it the better bet for advanced amateurs and professionals than the X700, the top end model of the X series without drawing out the comparison relying on magazine reviews and users to it spell it out.

Having used both, I much prefer the X500 in the field while when it comes to accessories the two cameras use the same as you can use it without having to remove your eye from the viewfinder.

The loss of the Program mode is no great loss as it is a general all purpose program mode rather than having program shifts or preset modes dedicated more to sports and so on that were to become more common place in the late 80's and beyond and there's no need to have a exposure compensation dial to apply compensation, given you have metered manual to set one, a exposure lock to take and fix a substitute reading and in the final event, there's also just resetting the film speed to cause the exposure given to differ.

New compact camera

As you might know photography and me were film based with things around that being the backbone of this blog but for a long period I have been without a pocket or compact camera as my old trusty Halina I had from the eighties died.

Recently I got this discontinued Canon Powershot A470 digital compact with a 3.4 times optical zoom that covers the 35mm film equivalent of  38 through 105mm which is handy from modest wide angle through short telephoto and has captures images at 7.1mp using its sensor.
Although it's program only, it takes good images aided by the much better than it needs to be optical zoom lens and accurate auto focus.It uses regular AA cells that are easy to find too.
I also got a Sandisk 16gb SD card for it to store images to as they're cheaper now.

The end of a photographic era

One thing that cannot be ignored is how changes in the photographic market have effected traditional photo retail with this weeks announced closure of Jessop's of Leicester who have branches here in North Staffordshire and also in Wolverhampton that I regularly visit ever since first getting into photography all those years ago.

The thing is a combination of many people using smartphones as cameras and the ascendancy of digital photography has cut the repeat custom as today a person can get a phone or even a digital camera and apart from maybe getting another lens, that is it.

In the past of course we came in week after week to buy film, hand films for processing, get enlargements done and while doing that we saw things that may expand on what we were taking.

You developed a relationship with the staff who tended to be experienced amateur photographers too so they were able to advise you on problems or where an idea may not work so well. 

In Jessop's case they even run photo courses for people who wished to up their photography featuring many experts.

R.I.P Jessops