A new lens...

Hello, well this is rare, a second post in the same month!

If i can pull my finger out and find the time I'm hoping to have even more this month but I wanted to just mention what I have been up to recently other than work and the running (yes running training for the Plymouth Half Marathon in May)

Last weekend i was asked to Photograph a friends hockey team, great I thought as i have been watching others blog and post sports portraits and thought I'd love to give it a go. So I started looking on flickr for some other hockey photos and have read a thing or two about sports photography and you really need a good bit of glass.

Currently i am only sporting a 70 - 300 f4-5.6, its pretty old but does the trick for out and about general use so i thought to myself I should try this guy that was recommended to me who hires out gear and is local so I can just pop down and collect it. LensPimp is the site and on there was a Nikon 70 - 200 f2.8 VRII which is a lens i was already considering in purchasing when i can afford it.

After registering with the site to hire the lens in question for the weekend (3 days) it cost me £49 which was an absolute bargain i thought, this would allow me to take photos for my friend that they would be happy with and i would get to play with a lens before i take a loada money out to buy it.

Needless to say i love the camera lens and ended up using it Friday, Saturday and Sunday taking over 800 pics in a weekend.

So anyway i just wanted to say that i will be busy processing my pictures but hope to have another three posts detailing each day. 

I'm off to Birmingham NEC  2 weeks today for the annual Focus on Imaging camera convention if anyone reads this and is going on the Wednesday I'll see you there. (I'll be the guy with the new Nikon 70 - 200 f2.8)

Feburay Update...At Last

Hello world, my second ever blog post and its February, I did say I was going to start a blog but I have been struggling to find time to get out and take pictures let alone sit down and write a blog.

I have managed to take a few pictures of my friend Phil while he was down from Bristol, and also a recent trip to Llandudno in North Wales which I’d like to share with you.

I’ve not really mentioned the gear that I have or what I’m using, I used to think that it was important that I had a decent camera and lens and other accessories, which isn’t true, I have a decent compact camera that takes RAW photos and think I’ll do a mini project with the compact to show that you don’t need an SLR to take good pictures.

My first Picture was taken in my Garden where I have this 7ft stone wall that runs down the back of the garden and all the neighbours as well, this was taken with my Nikon D80 and a Sigma 105 Macro lens, just goes to show how versatile a Macro lens can be. Also used a Lasolite 60cm softbox with a SB-800 with a wireless trigger which was camera right.

This was one of my favourite pictures from the day, recently I joined ModelMayhem where I have a fairly new profile and was looking for pictures that I could use to show my work to other like minded peeps. After a few days I received a friend request from a photo retoucher called Argiris from Greece and I decided I’d give him ago to see what someone with some more time could do with it. What I got back was exactly what I wanted and was very pleased with the results.

My other Image was taken after reading a few blog posts from Dave DiCello @ HDR Exposed. He has dedicated most of his photography to HDR and his local Ice Hockey Team. Dave has some very useful tutorials on how to create your very own HDR pictures. After going to a HDR presentation at my local camera club I have started looking at his blog and the results that he is producing, very jealous of both the HDR pictures and that fact that he blogs around 5 days a week :P

Anyway my second image was based on reading his blogs before I went to Wales, we (the missus and me) drove to Stockport on the Friday and stayed with family and on the Saturday we went to the sea side (I know, how quaint) so in the car to Llandudno we went, we arrived and it was not the best conditions for a HDR, not a cloud in sight anyway we pressed on along what turned out to be at least a mile of promenade before we got to the pier, taking the usual tourist pics with my compact on the way I noticed that the sky was burnt out and even with the built in ND setting in the camera it wasn’t as I was seeing it. So I flipped my camera over in to bracketing mode and started snapping away three exposures +/- 2 stops.

At the end of the Pier there was an old glass building painted with blue trim, I walked around the whole thing looking for the best angle and thought this could be an excellent HDR if I can get it right. I set the camera to +/- 1 stop and took three exposures. Today before I started thinking Mike you should really do another blog or else it’ll be like every other new year’s resolution you give up I opened Photomatix and dropped in the three images, if I had more time and had thought about it more I should have taken them in RAW to allow me to get the most out of the image, there is a lot of noise in the image, and I am aware that it happens a lot in HDR images.

Not many people are fans of HDR images and even fans have different opinions on what makes a  good and bad one, some like it realistic others fantasy. Me, well it depends on the image and that’s that. Everyone’s entitled to their views and it won’t be everyone’s cuppa tea. Speaking of tea i'm off for a cuppa! I hope to get some more pics over the weekend as i am taking some of a friend playing hockey so hope to have another post soon!

see you then