Thursday 27 June 2013
£12.88 eBay ND filter kit
What
can you get for £12.88?
Turns out quite a lot, inspired by my wonderful Haida Pro 10 stop filter I decided to have a look on ebay and see what else was available as after covering the recent World slalom canoe championship I needed something to bring my shutter speeds down in bright sunlight as I was getting silly speeds at F22 at iso50.
After a bit of searching I found this little ND 2,4,8 kit with Cokin style holder in fact you get this:
52mm 58mm 67mm 72mm 77mm Adapter Ring + ND2 ND4 ND8+Holder
I thought it was a lot of stuff for the money and would probably be rubbish optically but it was worth a punt so I placed my order – oh and the free P&P helped too
Two days later the parcel arrived and I was on first impressions very surprised with what I got, every adapter ring was well made and metal, the Cokin style filter holder was made of decent enough plastic and held the adapter rings and filter well.
I was very impressed with how the filters were presented, they are packed in a very well made and practical soft case and again inside this each of the filters are in a plastic sleeve.
Turns out quite a lot, inspired by my wonderful Haida Pro 10 stop filter I decided to have a look on ebay and see what else was available as after covering the recent World slalom canoe championship I needed something to bring my shutter speeds down in bright sunlight as I was getting silly speeds at F22 at iso50.
After a bit of searching I found this little ND 2,4,8 kit with Cokin style holder in fact you get this:
52mm 58mm 67mm 72mm 77mm Adapter Ring + ND2 ND4 ND8+Holder
I thought it was a lot of stuff for the money and would probably be rubbish optically but it was worth a punt so I placed my order – oh and the free P&P helped too
Two days later the parcel arrived and I was on first impressions very surprised with what I got, every adapter ring was well made and metal, the Cokin style filter holder was made of decent enough plastic and held the adapter rings and filter well.
I was very impressed with how the filters were presented, they are packed in a very well made and practical soft case and again inside this each of the filters are in a plastic sleeve.
Not
bad huh?
So how about the optical quality?
Well I have to say they are pretty bloody good, I can't see any marks or poor performance and I will happily use them for a shoot, the three sample images have been resized and auto colour, contrast & levels in PS – What can you get for £12.88 turns out quite a lot well worth a look if your in the market for some very affordable filters that don't have to be treated with too much care because for this price they are easily replaced.
Sample shots:
So how about the optical quality?
Well I have to say they are pretty bloody good, I can't see any marks or poor performance and I will happily use them for a shoot, the three sample images have been resized and auto colour, contrast & levels in PS – What can you get for £12.88 turns out quite a lot well worth a look if your in the market for some very affordable filters that don't have to be treated with too much care because for this price they are easily replaced.
Sample shots:
Thursday 20 June 2013
Tuesday 18 June 2013
Some of my Formula 1 Panel images that I've been working on
I know about Triptychs but what are they called when you have 5,6,7,8,9..... sections on one image?
Jenson Button
Damon Hill
Michael Schumacher
Mario Andretti
Graham Hill
Alain Prost
Jackie Stewart
Tyretych?
The images above are for your viewing pleasure only and may not be reproduced in any form without permission from me
Saturday 15 June 2013
Penarth
I went to Penarth today to some landscape type stuff, I found it an utterly uninspiring place to go and it was windier than a fat man on a baked bean diet.
I understand that other people might love it but I just don't, the only thing I remember about the place with any fondness was the 1960's style arcade they had, but that's been knocked down to make room for apartments.
It used to have this arcade:
I understand that other people might love it but I just don't, the only thing I remember about the place with any fondness was the 1960's style arcade they had, but that's been knocked down to make room for apartments.
It used to have this arcade:
Yeah I know pretty, but when your a kid it was dry and you could play games
These days it's a couple of very overrated restaurants (I've eaten in them they are O.K at best) with the usual uninterested student service indicative of the UK, a lifeboat station and a derelict pier that's being turned into yet another arts center. and what Cardiff and it's surrounding areas does need is another bloody 'arts' center.
I made this postcard to celebrate my day out:
I've not really got much more to say about it now, apart from the fact that the grass really is greener when it comes to Penarth or should that be the sea is bluer?
Here are some crap photos from my adventure:
Friday 14 June 2013
Cardiff from the hip
Shots taken at waist level with clicking away while walking through town on a rainy day
CF or SD
I'm still getting used to the 5DmK3 dual card slots, Yeah I know what your thinking 'is it really something you have to learn?' and I thought the same as you but let me tell you it's actually harder to deal with when you have more choice.
You can:
. Clone the shoot to have a backup
. Write JPEG and RAW to separate cards
. Use the second card to spill over when the first is full
. And probably some more options I have not listed here
I think this list of options is great and dual cards is a great idea, yeah I know it's not new but it is new to me.
Unfortunately it is confusing the hell out of me, I come from the days of old when film was used (I'm 34 not old ok!) and I consider most of my shots being constrained by 24 or 36 exposures so haveing an SD card that will shoot over two thousand images (depending on ISO etc) is great and I have never filled one, I have an old CF card that is a mighty 2GB strong, yes I intend to upgrade soon but at the moment it's what I have so it lives in what I consider the second slot as my 16GB SD card in in the first - all the wrong way around I know but does it really matter? well I shoot a lot of Motorsport, video, live music and well you get the idea and I've not had an issue.....ever.
The main gripe I have though is that if I want to take out my primary card mid shoot and look at some of the images on the PC then the camera automatically switches to the second card as primary despite it being 'off' and not on again until both cards are back in it's slots - why? I can't see an option to switch this off and to be honest it's bloody annoying.
I've had a couple of times now when I'm just test shooting and taken a card out only to find my workflow has switched to the second card, I can see why this would be great when a card fails on a shoot (never happened to me) but not when the camera is off, you then have to do the card dance and do the process in reverse to get the cards read/write in the original order you wanted.
I'd like Canon to make a custom function available where I can open the quick menu and swap the card order over, does this exist? I'm only half way through the phone-book sized manual that came with the camera so forgive my ignorance if I've just not got to that page yet.
In fact I'm going to have a look now............
Oh for fu.................... the 5DmK3 does indeed have this as a quick menu function, I am an idiot, I'm going to post this anyway as it has helped me figure out what I needed to do and shows that next time before I write a long and dull post perhaps I should look at the issue first?!?
You can:
. Clone the shoot to have a backup
. Write JPEG and RAW to separate cards
. Use the second card to spill over when the first is full
. And probably some more options I have not listed here
I think this list of options is great and dual cards is a great idea, yeah I know it's not new but it is new to me.
Unfortunately it is confusing the hell out of me, I come from the days of old when film was used (I'm 34 not old ok!) and I consider most of my shots being constrained by 24 or 36 exposures so haveing an SD card that will shoot over two thousand images (depending on ISO etc) is great and I have never filled one, I have an old CF card that is a mighty 2GB strong, yes I intend to upgrade soon but at the moment it's what I have so it lives in what I consider the second slot as my 16GB SD card in in the first - all the wrong way around I know but does it really matter? well I shoot a lot of Motorsport, video, live music and well you get the idea and I've not had an issue.....ever.
The main gripe I have though is that if I want to take out my primary card mid shoot and look at some of the images on the PC then the camera automatically switches to the second card as primary despite it being 'off' and not on again until both cards are back in it's slots - why? I can't see an option to switch this off and to be honest it's bloody annoying.
I've had a couple of times now when I'm just test shooting and taken a card out only to find my workflow has switched to the second card, I can see why this would be great when a card fails on a shoot (never happened to me) but not when the camera is off, you then have to do the card dance and do the process in reverse to get the cards read/write in the original order you wanted.
I'd like Canon to make a custom function available where I can open the quick menu and swap the card order over, does this exist? I'm only half way through the phone-book sized manual that came with the camera so forgive my ignorance if I've just not got to that page yet.
In fact I'm going to have a look now............
Oh for fu.................... the 5DmK3 does indeed have this as a quick menu function, I am an idiot, I'm going to post this anyway as it has helped me figure out what I needed to do and shows that next time before I write a long and dull post perhaps I should look at the issue first?!?
Thursday 13 June 2013
Elvis Costello
Got a call from a buddy of mine John Rea, he owns a recording studio called the Machine Rooms:
http://www.machinerooms.co.uk/
He pulled some strings and got me a press pass for the recent Elvis Costello gig at St David's Hall in Cardiff, the show was fantastic and I was even given a spare seat to watch the rest of the show from and if you have ever shot gig in the past you'll know that is a rarity as it's normally three songs and out.
The 5DmK3 performed admirably as well, I had to shoot the show from the mixing desk so was forced to use my old (and i mean old) 75-300 non IS zoom as I do not have a decent L equivalent yet, despite some marked vignetting the 5DmK3 made up for the lens and gave me some great shots, I was a little weary at first on pushing the ISO but soon got used to shooting at ISO5000 which is insane, the grain was minimal and comparable to a roll of HP5!
Here's one of my favorite shots from the gig F5, 250sec, iso5000, 170mm (75-300) 5DmK3
Wednesday 5 June 2013
La Vie en Bleu 2013
Here are some of the picks from this years La vie en Bleu Bugatti club hill climb at the Prescott track.
I'm really happy with the Canon 5DMk3, it's ability to track motion and fine tune auto-focus options is miles ahead of anything I've used in the past and to be honest the 6FPS is more than adequate for my needs.
The combination of the 5DMk3 and the 24-105L makes for a versatile and extremely piece of pro kit, with the lens giving more then enough speed and stability to be hand held.
one thing that really struck me was not how good a full frame DSLR is (it is though) but how much I missed a 100% accuracy viewfinder, it makes a huge difference.
I really enjoyed shooting the event and was a baptism of fire - of sorts as it combined a new camera with a new subject (fast moving cars), I was really surprised by the amount of Pro's who from what I could make out were just after a visual record of the event and were capturing shots at a few hundred of a sec on iso-really flipping high, at no point did I see anyone else attempt a pan shot?
I was recommended by the light meter to shoot up to a 1000sec at F11 on iso100, it was a really nice sunny day so I ignored that dropped the iso to 50 and shot at anything from 30th-100sec at F16-22 which would give me enough time to pan the sot and get some background blur to give a sense of motion to the images instead of the static might as well be shot in a carpark image.
hopefully next year I can bag a press pass to the event.
I'm really happy with the Canon 5DMk3, it's ability to track motion and fine tune auto-focus options is miles ahead of anything I've used in the past and to be honest the 6FPS is more than adequate for my needs.
The combination of the 5DMk3 and the 24-105L makes for a versatile and extremely piece of pro kit, with the lens giving more then enough speed and stability to be hand held.
one thing that really struck me was not how good a full frame DSLR is (it is though) but how much I missed a 100% accuracy viewfinder, it makes a huge difference.
I really enjoyed shooting the event and was a baptism of fire - of sorts as it combined a new camera with a new subject (fast moving cars), I was really surprised by the amount of Pro's who from what I could make out were just after a visual record of the event and were capturing shots at a few hundred of a sec on iso-really flipping high, at no point did I see anyone else attempt a pan shot?
I was recommended by the light meter to shoot up to a 1000sec at F11 on iso100, it was a really nice sunny day so I ignored that dropped the iso to 50 and shot at anything from 30th-100sec at F16-22 which would give me enough time to pan the sot and get some background blur to give a sense of motion to the images instead of the static might as well be shot in a carpark image.
hopefully next year I can bag a press pass to the event.
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