It’s been just over a year since I bought my D70 kit, and what an excellent buy it has been. I would of course be the first to say that I still have a lot to learn, but that’s half the fun.
I read a website article recently which stated that you shouldn’t expect to master anything in less than ten years. It also had the quite wonderful idea of releasing anti-trend books to this view; “Teach yourself programming in ten years” I believe was an example. I actually find this idea quite comforting, and am happy to work towards it.
In the last year I’ve taken roughly 3,700 pictures with my D70 (or to be more precise roughly that number have been taken with it, as I cannot take credit for every picture)
As those of you aware of my website photo gallery there is a grand total of 24 pictures from that 3,700ish that I feel are quality enough to share with the general populus. I hope that the next year will bring more pictures in both counts!
It seems that researchers at The university of Rochester have made some interesting and exciting advancements in the field of CMOS camera sensors. Not only have they reduced the power consumption drastically, they’ve also increased the dynamic range a lot, and greatly reduced the amount of processing power required for compression. For more detailed information and vauge clues as to how they did this, read this article at camera-news.com
Yesterday I took a drive to an area called Virginia Water, with the intention of taking some photos. Picturesque place is Virginia Water. In an attempt to be prepared I took all three of my lenses. Including my super long lens. My thought was that perhaps I’d be able to take pictures of some wildlife. Seems that the wildlife of Virginia Water had a memo about this, and had constructed a plan. The plan was this.
Pose.
Wait, until Rob is nearly ready.
Run.
Every rabbit and every squirrel had recieved this memo an acted on it with skill. Finding the perfect pose, in the ideal early evening light, waiting. Nibbling a nut or twitching a nose, these animals were teasing me!!!
Still, at least I had a relaxing walk.
It’s been a damn long time coming, but I’ve finally uploaded some more pictures to my gallery. A grand total of six from the Guildford town cycle race. The best ones I think, and one more from my skiing holiday.
As always the link on the right will take you there. Enjoy!!
If you’ve got any comments about the pictures, pop them in this post ‘cos the gallery only allows users to add comments, which is damn annoying.
Stupid online shopping.
I suppose I have myself to blame, the fact that I know my credit card number off-by-heart pretty much nullifies the cunning and clever leave-it-at-home-anti-spending-plan. I said ‘off-by-heart’ on purpose, because memorised implies intent and I honestly didn’t set out to learn my credit card details for internet shopping…
Honestly.
So I guess I’ll have to take my photography a bit more seriously.
Why you ask?
Well yesterday in a fit of enthusiasm for the upcoming move to a bigger room in the house (August), I was doing a bit of research into the prospect of getting a new computer to celebrate the existance of a desk. Doing the build in stages seems to be a good idea purely from a financial point of view. Although this does mean that at some point during the process I’ll have a swanky new case with nothing in it, but thats beside the point.
The first stage of the process I logically decided would be to get a decent screen, this can be used on my laptop until the rest of the new machine is complete. And well if I’m going to get a new monitor I may as well look into the price of those calibration doo-dars.
Whats that, they’re how much… well in that case…
Before you know it, the order is placed for a Spyder 2 monitor calibration device. It has yet to arrive, or even be dispatched. If there is anyone in the Guildford area that wants an ICC profile for their monitor (windows 2000 or XP only)… tenner a go.
At some point in the future I may even get round to adding a contact page to this site so you can actually email me with interest.
For a long time now I’ve been involved, in the loosest sense of the word, with a photography forum started and hosted by Denyerec.
A topic that has come up in the past is the equipment carried on a standard photography mission. It soon became apparent and has been pointed out to me by the other members that I take too much stuff with me, a partial contributor to my lack of photo expiditions.
Here is a list of items usually found about my person when going out to take photos:
- 1x D70 camera body
- 1x 60mm Macro lens F2.8
- 1x 18-70mm Zoom lens F3.8-4.8
- 1x Ironing board
- 1x Lens cloth
- 1x Leaf blower (medium)
- 1x compass
- 1x Water mellon (ripe)
- 1x Road atlas of southern France
- 2x Kendal mint cake
- 1x Tub of margarine
- 1x Armadillo trap
- 1x Eager scouts disguise kit (with moustache extras)
And the list goes on…
I think I need to put a bit more thought into what is actually required.
The blogging absence of the last few days was caused by a trip to Cambridge, a house party and a sudden but temporary urge to get away from technology.
I have now returned to my cosy little house in Guildford feeling tired and slightly ill but actually quite good overall.
There are an awful lot of people getting here searching for information about the Ilford receivership, this made me feel slightly guilty so I decided to find out more information.
The financial times has an article about it, but you have to pay to look at it so I’ve got no idea what it says.
BBC news now has a story about it (after me I might add :D) [link].
For those that really can’t be bothered to follow the link, here is a synopsis:
Ilford is 125 years old, it has debts of over £40 million (mentioned in my last ilford post) The major problem seems to be the film making section of the company which is based in Cheshire. There is a Swiss section of the company which will stay as it is due to being in the profitable market of dyes for inkjet printers.
Black and white film sales have fallen by and average of 11% per year for the last three years.
Yes this is a sad day for traditional B&W photographers throughout the world, the company that is synonymous with high quality black and white photographic papers and films is now in receivership.
At the moment the future of the company is unknown, redundancies are deffinately on the cards (unfortunately) as the company has debts of over £40 million.
All I can say is that I (and undoubtably many other photographers) hope that the accountants manage to salvage something and keep the company afloat.
my fingers are crossed.
By the way I found this out on the channel 4 news.
[update]
For all the camera fans eagerly awaiting the new digital SLR from fuji (S3) dpreview.com has some updated info. Related to it.
Personally I’m supprised at how long this kinda thing is in development. I mean there was a press release about some of the features including pictures of (I assume) a working prototype back in May (2004) and still no retail options, as far as I know.
[update]
You can pre-order it for $4000 ❗ and its going to be available in October 2004 (ish)
Anyone who wants to buy me one for no reason please don’t hesitate 😛
Ever since I put black and white film in my camera I’ve been kinda scared to use it… isn’t that silly?!
I think the main reason for this is that I associate B&W photos with a level of artistic-ness that I just don’t have.
In an attempt to get some ideas/confidence I bought a B&W photo magazine (was also facing a long train journey to somewhere), there were an awful lot of very interesting things in there, including information about photo holidays !
I’d love to go on one but they’re damn expensive.
There was also some info on ‘toy’ cameras, and how with a plastic lens camera costing less than £30 its possible to take some fairly decent ‘artsy’ photos…
for a short while I was very enthused (didn’t actually take any pictures but hey) and thought about getting a toy type camera for myself.
…… but then the realisation slowly dawned on me; It doesn’t matter what equipment you have or haven’t got, its not going to improve your photographic talent. I should stick with my current camera as its not holding me back in any way, and probably won’t for a long time.
What I really need to do is get properly familiar with my camera, so that I can bang off photos with it without really having to think (its a proper manual job – FYI).
A poor workman blames his tools, to an extent.
randomtask 