And its right on my doorstep. Official opening next Wednesday at 7pm in store. Worth a look as they will have the new Canon 6D, 1DX and many other yet to be seen and hard to get items on display for a gawk... Have a look at the flyer below for information....
Back at the end of July I shot a wedding for the beautiful Annabella and Tommy. Having shot another wedding in the same place a couple of years ago I kind off new what to expect in terms of location. But this one was a little different.... I guess the bride didn't want to very similar pics to her sister who's wedding I shot at the same location. So to make it different we went to probably one of the most beautiful (and appropriate) locations for a wedding shoot I have ever seen. The wedding was just outside Crawley in the South of England, the church being in Crawley itself and the reception in the brides beautiful family house in the countryside just outside Pease Pottage. Having shot the formal shots at the house for the previous wedding I was delighted when I heard we would be going to Nymans Gardens for this wedding. Nymans is a National Trust property which means it is incredibly well looked after. There wasn't a dead flower head to be seen and every part of these huge gardens was immaculately well looked after. This place had absolutely everything for a wedding photographer.... from beautiful brick arches, natural wooded archways to water features and natural stone gazebos..! All authentic and well maintained. I couldn't go wrong inthis place... no photographer of any merit could. This place was a wedding photographers wet dream...! The only thing against me was time. As anyone is aware, weddings can be time stressed enough without introducing extra venues for photography. Then I arrive at this amazing place where I could have shot all day but had to limit my options. The funny thing was that the bride and groom grew up only a couple of miles away from the place yet I think I knew more about it and all its features. I had a very set idea as to exactly how I was going to use my short amount of time to get the exact pictures I wanted. Thankfully some other wedding photographers had shot here so when doing my research I was able to see and plan my route through the gardens. Anyway I wont waffle on.... here are some pictures from the Nyamns Gardens and a few others from what turned out to be a very successful shoot....!
I spend a lot of time with my headphones on.... be it my 2.5 hour return commute to Dublin everyday, the 8 hours a day in front of a screen in the office or the 2 hours a week walking behind the lawnmower...! That amounts to a lot of hours.... in fact I've no doubt I'm doing some type of irreparable damage to my ear drums. I'd prefer that, than listening to the drone of the bus engine or the endless technical phone calls in the office. Hahaha..... Anyway with so much listening to be done I had to get a decent, comfortable and reliable pair of headphones. I've been a fan of Sennhesier for a long time and wanted something that didnt release sound and annoy fellow workers or commuters but they also had to perform for the type of music and content I listen to. After a fair amount of reading reviews and chatting with friends I ended up with a pair of Sennheiser HD 25 II closed can style headphones. Super stuff which I highly recommend and not over styled like many of the over priced and underperforming rubbish out there...!
Anyway back to the reason I am typing this post... podcasts... I listen to a few photography ones religiously as well as other tech, footy and nerdy ones...! Here is a list with a little review of each... they are all available through iTunes but I'll link to their websites too if there is one... First up the photography ones...
Probably one of the most listened to podcasts on the net and in my opinion probably the best. A great mix of guest speakers and interviews, product reviews and recommendations with a bit of fun and banter thrown in. Not too tech heavy either. Its my cutting the grass podcast which is prime time...!!!!
A weekly Irish podcast run by Peter Cox, Roger Overall and Neil McShane looking at what is going on in the world of photography. 3 very different photographers with very different styles and opinions which makes for an entertaining and informative listen.
A log running photography podcast touching on every aspect of photography. Martin is great to listen to and also often podcasts enhanced videocasts with reviews, interviews and competition results. Based out of Tokyo its interesting to hear whats going on on the other side of the planet.
Roger Overall (from The Circle of Confusion fame...!) interviews some amazing and very famous photographers. Very interesting and informative stuff. Really like Rogers style of interviewing. Its a relatively new podcast and am really looking forward to see how this one develops...!
Chris Marquardt podcasts from Germany on a wide range of subjects. Informative, technical and very listenable..! Well... listenable apart from that annoying theme tune that gets stuck in your head for hours after listening. His style often seems a little unorganised but again its very listenable.
There are a couple of other Photography related podcasts that I listen to but irregularly so I wont bother mentioning them...! The next list are all kinda a bit random but please keep reading....
Josh and Chuck discuss the most random of things from 'Can it rain frogs' to 'Body Odor', in what turns out to be a highly entertaining and extremely interesting listen. Probably my favorite podcast of all. When subscribing go way back down through the list to find some seriously whacky episodes.... Highly recommend this one..!
A weekly update on whats going on in the world of technology. Everything from gaming to web and computers is discussed with some great interviews to boot. Worth a listen. The Guardian really do know how to make podcasts.
This is a videocast from the infamous TED talks. Some seriously amazing speakers in front of live audiences discussing everything from solutions for world problems to music and technology. Really worth a listen/watch...!
Being a self confessed Mac geek this is one I enjoy but obviously not to everyones taste . If you are my way inclined be sure to have a listen...!
I've been a footy (Liverpool FC) fan for a long time. This podcast delivers a weekly mix of Premiership, International or whatever other footy is happening. Funny at times too. The Guardian deliver again...!
Whilst I dont listen the podcast itself that often I do listen to the show live regularly so I can highly recommend the podcast. Award winning sports show by my favorite radio station...!
Thats about it for podcasts that I listen to. If you have something worth adding to the list please leave a comment below and I'll add it to the list if its worth its position...! haha
Ill be back soon with another post...!
Richie
Hi all.... yeah its been a while again since my last post but I have a few coming up soon. Anyway as you are probably aware I am an active member of a camera club. My club (Mid Louth Camera Club) is this weekend having their exhibition. A few members have been very successful this year with the IPF National Nature Championship overall winner and the IPF National Print and Projected Competition overall winner amongst other awards. Have a look at the attached flyer for information. Everyone is welcome and theres no admission fee so please do come along if ye can...!
As you may be aware I shoot a lot of landscape and architectural photographs. For landscapes I'd say I use filters in 95% of my shots to balance exposures and/or control shutter speeds. With architectural (especially exteriors) its roughly the same. To be honest both forms of photography are very similar in setup.... from timing to equipment how one sets out to take photos of a beautiful seascape or a modern piece of architecture are very alike. What I will try to explain below is, what filters are what, what they do to your images and advise on whats best for your camera system. I'll speak almost exclusively about Neutral Density filters and just tip on polarizers towards the end.
I'll start by explaining all the terminology. Ok so there are basically a few different types of filters. Neutral density filters themselves come in 3 different variants (that I am aware of). A plain full neutral density filter is one where there is no gradation across the width of the filter. So from top to bottom of the resin/glass it will be a neutral grey. They come in either square or rectangular slide format or circular screw in types. Why do they call it neutral you might ask....? Theoretically they are a neutral grey and shouldn't cast any colours across the area of the image they are used upon. In reality most ND filters cast some amount of colour but with some being much more 'neutral' than others. I've tried a few different types starting with Cokin that give a purple/pink tone to B+W which give a brown/orange and finally to Lee (where I remain) that give as neutral a colour balance I have seen so far with maybe a very very slight blue cast on heavier grads. Of course all casts are removable in post processing if shooting RAW but it can get tricky when using graduated filters where they only effect part of the image. These graduated filters are exactly that... graduated from grey to completely clear. They come in a few different types.... hard graduated, soft graduated and reverse grads. Hard graduated filters fade from dark to clear quite quickly. Upon measuring they fade in around 8mm. Soft graduated filters on the other hand fade much slower across the frame. Upon measurement they fade in around 30mm. The other type of filter is a reverse ND filter (or stripe filter) which has a dark central portion. All these filters are available in various formats, colours, materials and intensities. This intensity is general measured in F-stops but is also sometimes measured as optical density or percentage transmission. Have a look at the table below (from Wikipedia) for various densities and what they equate to (Lee write the optical density on their filters) ....
| ND | FRACTION | OPTICAL DENSITY | F-STOP | % TRANSMITTANCE |
| 1 | 0.0 | 100.000% | ||
| ND2 | 1/2 | 0.3 | 1 | 50.000% |
| ND4 | 1/4 | 0.6 | 2 | 25.000% |
| ND8 | 1/8 | 0.9 | 3 | 12.500% |
| ND16 | 1/16 | 1.2 | 4 | 6.250% |
| ND32 | 1/32 | 1.5 | 5 | 3.125% |
| ND64 | 1/64 | 1.8 | 6 | 1.563% |
| ND128 | 1/128 | 2.1 | 7 | 0.781% |
| ND256 | 1/256 | 2.4 | 8 | 0.391% |
| ND512 | 1/512 | 2.7 | 9 | 0.195% |
| ND1024 | 1/1024 | 3.0 | 10 | 0.098% |
| ND2048 | 1/2048 | 3.3 | 11 | 0.049% |
| ND4096 | 1/4096 | 3.6 | 12 | 0.024% |
| ND8192 | 1/8192 | 3.9 | 13 | 0.012% |
One question that I am always being asked by fellow photographers is 'What type of filters should I buy...??? Hard or soft graduated'. I always answer this question based on my own personal experience in using the Lee system. I have both hard and soft and soft ND filters and have used them for both landscape and architectural photography. Personally I have found that on a 35mm equivalent digital sensor (5d or 5d2) that the hard grads work best. I find that the graduation from grey to clear to be about enough when used on both wide angle and short telephoto lens. In terms of usage I would say I use the hard grads about 85% of the time. Grads in general would have less of an effect on a cropped sensor as technically the graduation would be happening across a greater area of the frame. If using soft grads on a cropped sensor on a wide angle lens the effect of the graduation would be so gentle that one might nit see the effect of its use on the image. As a basic test I measured the size of the front element glass on the front of my Canon 17-40L, a fairly typical and popular wide angle lens on both full frame and cropped Canons. It measures approximately 55mm.Considering tolerances of the sensor etc I'd say around 50mm of that is used. If using a soft grad on a full frame 35mm camera you'd be left with around 10mm above and below the graduation. In use I have found this to be just about useable on full frame but the effects when using anything under a 2 stop grad are hard to see on the finished images. On a cropped sensor the effect of the soft grad would be even less pronounced. So on that basis I would always recommend Hard Graduated filters for 35mm equivalent DSLR cameras (full frame or cropped sensor). Lee themselves give similar advice....
"Should I use hard or soft grads? This depends on: the type of photography, the type of equipment, and the requirements of an individual situation. There is no simple answer, most professionals will carry a selection of both. Hard Grads tend to be used on smaller format cameras (DSLR or 35mm) and are used for general landscape shots with a definite horizon. Soft Grads tend be used on larger format cameras or on very wide angle lenses and are used for balancing exposure evenly, when there is no definite horizon i.e. in cities or other situations when you may have an uneven skyline."
Now I will list a few reasons why one should use neutral density filters......
There may be a few others but the ones above are the reasons that I use ND filters anyway...!!!
Of course there are Polarizing filters as well and while technically they are not ND filters they do reduce the amount of light coming into your lens by between 1.5 and 2.5 stops. So the effects listed above would also be achieved. Polarizers can also enhance colours in blue skys and vegetation by reducing the amount of glare and reflection. This reduction in reflection can be used to great effect when shooting in shallow waters where there are nice rock formations just below the surface. Also useful for reducing reflection in glass...! If shooting skies ensure you shoot at the best angle - for nice blue skies move around so that the sun is at 90 degrees to the subject - anything more or less and the saturation is reduced and the effect wasted. Be careful using them on extremely wide angle lens on blue sky days as some parts of the sky will look overly saturated and false. To be honest I generally use polarizers for reducing reflection and haze as the saturation effect I can almost mimic in post processing. Vignetting can also be an issue on wide angle lens so try to use slim versions. Circular screw in versions are generally easier to use and easily available therefore more popular.
Ok shit I am babbling again.... This was supposed to be a short post..... I hope my advice (ramblings...????) help someone when choosing or using filters. I may expand this post in time to speak more about the usage of ND filters but for the moment I'll leave it as is...! I'll finish by giving you a few links for further info and advice.....
The Ultimate guide to Neutral Density Filters by Peter Hill (and it truly is.....!)
What is a neutral density filter?
Basically I have a head like a sieve...! I'm often walking along listening to my music, or sitting looking out the window of the bus, daydreaming, when suddenly, in jumps an idea for a photograph into my head. Pretty soon after that the idea jumps right back out again. That was until a very talented friend of mine mentioned to me that he had the same problem but sorted it very simply. He kept a small notepad with him at all times and when those fleeting ideas entered his head he jotted them down...! So I copied him and have been doing it every since. Recently I've started doing it on the iPad and iPhone instead and its synced with all my other Apple devices as a constant reminder that I have work to do. Haha..... So there.... no more excuses for being a numbskull like me...!
Firstly many apologies for the massive gap in my blog. I've been fairly busy at work and at home and kinda lost interest for a while. I have a few ideas in my head for future posts..... Anyway I started typing this post in early October so here go's.....
October 5th 2011 was a sad sad day for me and any other Apple product users out there. Steve Jobs death whilst somewhat expected due to his recent illnesses was still a big shock to everyone. His vision and drive where unrivaled and ultimately unique. He drove everyone around him to be better, not just those that worked with him but everyone that used his beautifully designed products. I found out about his death as I was eating my breakfast and struggled to hold back the tears.... tears for someone I never met but I felt like I knew so well...! For any of you who havent already seen his Stanford commencement speech made in 2005 please watch it below... I challenge you not to let it touch you in some way.....
Anyway lets get one thing out of the way.... yes I am an Apple fanboy... yes I am a nerd when it comes to my gadgets - and most of them are Apple..! Now thats off my chest I'll begin to explain my Apple life so far and how their equipment has adjusted and enhanced the way I work and live.
It all started around 18 years back when I went on work experience to McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects. I was there for a week and was using Microstation on a Macintosh IICX. It had a 16Mhz processor and a hardisk of 40MB.... yes thats MB not GB....! At the time it was a pretty dam good machine and it drove 2 monitors... a 13 inch colour monitor and a 19 inch greyscale one. Compared to the PC's I had used in college beforehand it was very very fast and I found it really easy to get around. It cost around £3500 and that was without monitor, keyboard or mouse....! At the end of the week I was pretty much converted to Mac but new it would be a good few years until I could afford my own. As it happens I was also asked back on a temporary basis a few weeks later. I'm still temporary 18 years later. hahaha. So throughout my years in McGarry Ní Éanaigh I used everything from this IICX, various PowerMacs, G3, G4, G5's, G4 Cubes, MacMinis, XServes, iMacs from the very first one to my current 27inch Core i5 beast...!
Eventually I saved enough money to buy my own personal Mac at home and bought a G4 Cube. I bought it because at the time it was the cheapest way to get a Mac with a G4 processor. It was a beautiful machine and revolutionary in its design and size but it wasn't without its faults and ended up being one of Apples failures. Over time I needed more power and lusted after the PowerMac G5 from the day it was released. Again it was a crazy expensive machine but having a dual-processor and room for an extra harddrive and loads of Ram I thought it would fulfill my needs for my new hobby - photography....! The thing is with every new camera I bought the bigger the file size got and the more storage, ram and power was needed to process and store these images. The G5 did the job perfectly for around 4 years but I had upgraded everything I could and hardrives where beginning to fill so it was time to move on. Being a tower based machine I decided to make the logical jump to a MacPro. I got a nice one off eBay - new with dual quad core chips and a shite load of ram. Happy days. I nickname it 'The Beast' as it literally eats everything I throw at it without any issues...!
In the middle of all this I was now secretary in Mid Louth Camera Club and was running a lot of the digital workshop nights. A laptop was essential for this stuff so I bought a Powerbook G4. I got lucky with this one... I happened to be in PC World in Dundalk and I noticed they had the wrong price on it and they never noticed. Saved over €500 on that one...! Nice.... hahahaha...! I had that for nearly 5 years before for software incompatibility reasons I upgraded to the machine I am typing this post upon.... The MacBook Pro has been my base for nearly all communications, presentations and general day to day use. For the serious processing I still rely on the beast...! Recently I've had a few issues with the MacBook Pro but having purchased an extended warranty (from Ebay for really cheap) I'm confident that it'll be back to normal in no time at all. Basically with the Apple Extended Warranty I make a quick phone call or website visit, get a Case ID and drop it into my local Apple repair centre. Easy and simple...
Of course now that I am working in Dublin I have to make that bloody commute every day. Until a couple of months ago I was was hauling the laptop up and down the motorway. Every morning and evening I pushed onto the bus hoping to get the the back seat where there is a little bit extra space. Why...???? Because my laptop wouldn't open completely in the other seats. So I bit the bullet and offloaded a lens I didn't use much and bought an iPad 2. It was going to happen eventually as I am known for my love of gadgets and to me this is the ultimate. To say I love it is an understatement. When they where first released I did question how they would fit into the Apple lineup and doubted their success. But for someone travelling/commuting (with a bad back...!) its perfect. With every software update it improves too. Yes I also have an iPhone.... I queued to get the first one, second one and now the iPhone 4. I'll wait a while before getting the iPhone 4s but only because my contract isn't up until January. Now with Netflix being available in Ireland for all my devices it makes using the iPad especially even sweeter.
Speaking of Netflix.... I also have an AppleTV. Every weekend I sit back put the feet up and watch a movie or 2 with the missus. Until I got the AppleTV 2 I would make a 10 mile roundtrip to my nearest Xtra-Vision and rent 2 movies to cover 2 nights viewing. Now I save on the petrol and just rent the same movies off the AppleTV. Netflix has made it and even better device with loads of older movies and interesting documentaries at my disposal...!
So thats where I am at with Apple. I'm a happy camper so to speak. Without Jobs at the helm I reckon the next few years could be really interesting.
