Manchester Pride 2014

This weekend was my home city's LGBT Pride festival which I consider to be Manchester's best photo-op, not to mention a ton of fun. The festival itself takes the entirety of the August bank holiday weekend but I typically just attend the parade, which takes place on the afternoon of the Saturday. Normally I haul myself up to one of the deep window ledges that abound in the former warehouse district of the city where the parade finishes up (and I happen to live, by the gay village) but this does mean that I get the same kind of photos year-on-year so this year, since I was accompanied by a friend, I thought I'd switch it up and try and get closer in. It definitely netted some benefits and even my notoriously bad 28-300mm lens delivered some decently sharp shots. A selection are shown below but, as always, the full compliment can be found on my Flickr account.

Everest

I suppose this is the headline shot from this year's Asia trip- the summit of Mt. Everest taken from Rombak, 4km from Everest base camp (Tibet side). We were quite fortunate with the weather and had a couple of instances with clear views of the peak.
To be honest, it's not the most visually interesting mountain I've encountered- I've seen better in,say, Austria- it's fame is obviously due to its status but it does look rather nice at sunset viewed from the approach pass as it's flanked by the lower mountains.
While I'm pleased with the shot on the whole, the HDR effect is not kind to the edge of the cloud, which is unfortunate. I tried various combinations of applying the method to different exposures but with the same ultimate to varying degrees. Hopefully it's something that I can learn to overcome in future but I'm also not sure how noticeable it is to the casual viewer or if I just fixate upon it because I know it's there.

Bhutanese valley

Just a quick post with a shot from my last holiday that I thought makes a point about a notable change in my approach to photography today compared with a couple of years ago. This is a shot of a valley in Bhutan. The important thing is that it was taken on a beautiful clear day and it's just HDR and other post-processing that's sculpted this fictional brooding skyline. In truth is probably very obvious that this is the case- subtlety is clearly the next thing I need to learn with my photography- but what I take from this is that only a couple of years ago I was an out-of-the-camera purist and here I am now being happy to fundamentally alter the scene. There are pros and cons to both approaches of course, but I think that this usage probably benefits the type of photography that I most often find myself doing.

Monks

The holiday I returned from a couple of weeks ago was wonderful for indulging one of my favourite photographic subjects- monks. I love photographing monks. The colours, the activities and the sense of calm makes them ideal subjects. Here's a small selection of photos I took of monks with every lens I took with me (50mm prime, 16-28 f/2.8 wide angle, 28-300mm telephoto).

Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8

I made my decision on which wide-angle lens to purchase (see previous entry) and picked up the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8. The ratings and specs compared versus the price (when compared to Nikon's offerings) and the fact that they were a known quantity thanks to my excellent experiences with the equivalent crop-sensor model for my D7000. I knew from looking at the physical specs that the thing was heavy, what I'd not expected was the sheer size of the thing compared to its DX colleague. Truly it is a beast. Check out its size compared to the standard reference brew in the picture, for example. It's comparable with the alternatives, of couese, I just hadn't appreciated the scale-up of lenses that takes places in the shift from crop sensor to full-frame. Ah well, I've made my choice.

The quality of the lens itself is superb and I'm delighted, just as I was with its predecessor in my lineup. I've not got many example photos taken using the lens just yet but here's one of the Potala palace in Tibet. I look forward to many future shoots using it.

Post-hiatus

It seems that it's been some time since I wrote here. There was certainly a quieter spell where I didn't have much going on photography wise but that picked up in a big way a little over a month ago- I've got new gear, I've done a little event photography, took some photos while rock climbing and I spent the last month travelling around Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan so I'm currently processing the 2,700 photos from that trip. There's a lot to write about and many photos to share. I hope to work on getting a lot of content up here over the coming weeks. I've also been returning to some of my older photos to post-process them through my new software and with the expertise I've learned since they were originally done. I leave you with one such photo and a promise that more posts and photos are coming in the near future:

Crunching Numbers

I knew that my 28-300 lens wasn't great when I bought it. I wanted it for flexibility, not performance, but it's good to know that it will at least perform better on the full frame camera for which its purchase was intended, at least according to DxOMark. I've heard some criticism of DxO's lens comparison and I've even disagreed with some of their findings myself (they say that the Tokina 11-16 is best at f/2.8 whereas my own observations and indeed common sense suggest it's better at f/4 rather than wide open) but really, what better system are you going to use when researching lens purchases?

Wide angle problems

I hadn't realised but it turns out that I actually have a pretty specific set of requirements for a wide angle lens. That's good in a way, I suppose, since it implies I know what I want but it does mean that a number of available lenses don't meet one or more of the criteria:
+ At least 18mm wide
+ At least f/2.8
+ Decent rating from DxOMark or the like
+ Weigh less than my camera
+ Budget c.£700
+ Not fisheye

I'm open to either prime or zoom if it meets the requiements. The lens I'm using on my DX rig is the Tokina 11-16 and has been superb- my best lens- but I do tend to use it at the widest angle so it would make sense to just get a prime from that POV. I had been looking at switching to the FX equivelent of the 11-16, the 16-28 which I'm sure will deliver what I need but it weighs nearly a kilo! Not the most portable given that I mostly do wandering travel photography.

Sigma and Nikon both have well-regarded beautifully light 20mm primes (the Sigma one is f/1.8!) but I checked the loss of FOV on Nikon's handy lens simulator between 16 and 20mm and it's just too much for me. I prefer to see all the things. My best urban landscape shots are all 16mm equivelent. Sigma also do a 15mm prime but it's a fisheye and a (discontinued) 14mm prime that sadly doesn't appear to be very good. Other offerings from Nikon are a 14mm prime and a 14-24mm, both at f/2.8. This would be ideal were it not for the £1300 price tag.

So where does all this leave me? Apparently having to compromise- pay nearly twice what I'd like, lose some FOV or haul around a tank. I'm stumped.

D610 purchase

I went ahead and purchased a D610 from an eBay seller. Advertised as "new UK stock in sealed box" for £200 cheaper than the Amazon price. I was... cautious but decided to commit, reasoning that what is described is exactly what I want and if any aspect is not as described, I'm covered by eBay policy. Nothing to lose, right?

The item was dispatched quickly and arrived by special delivery the next day- a new, UK model complete with warranty card in... a box with a broken seal. Now, Nikon product registration accepted the serial number fine (and I know they do some validation on that since they prompted me about my gry market D7000 when I registered that) but I might give the warranty line a call and just check that they'll honour the warranty.

As for the camera itself, I've not had a project since I acquired it but I shot a couple of test shots of what happened to be around the place i.e. my cat.

It's nice to pair it with my FX lenses that I'd purchased prior to the switch. The AF feels great and I feel that the shots are coming out sharper than on my D7000. This probably just means that my D7000 needed a routine calibration maintenance, but I'm still pleased with what's coming out the of 610 in any case. It's worth noting that this shot was taken in a dark room and I was really pleased with its low-light AF performance (which has been something of a selling point) and the fact that it doesn't engage it's "assistance beacon" as readily as did the 7000 and seems to manage fine without it. Also very pleased with the bokeh of it when combined with the 50mm f/1.8.

I'll do another update on the camera when I've had a proper chance to use it on a project but my initial feeling is that I'm pleased with the investment.

Upgrade All The Lens!

My new lens arrived yesterday. Nothing too exciting, a NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8G, the full frame equivalent of the DX NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8D I've been using on my D7000. I've bought it in preparation of moving up to a full-frame body. In the interim, it works as a 75mm f/1.8 on the crop-sensor D7000. I'm sure I'll do an update about the lens itself before to long but what I wanted to write about today is the the process of piecemeal upgrading from the one system to the other- replacing my DX lens with an FX equivalent and the decisions about each. Here's my current gear and the options I'm considering for the upgrade:

Body:
Current (DX): D7000
Considered (FX): D610, D800
I've already written about delaying buying a D600 until the dust/oil issue was resolved and, now that the 610 has arrived, I've still got some reservations about that model. Namely, it's central clustering of focus points compared to the handsome spread on the D7000. Now, I understand that this is a problem generally on full-frame digital cameras but the 600/610 has it worse than many. Ideally, I'd really like to wait for the next iteration to see what happens there but I have some once-in-a-lifetime type travel plans coming up in a few months and I think I should have the full-frame for that hence I have to choose from what's available. Having pretty much committed to staying with Nikon (already picked up a couple FX lenses) my options are for the D610 or the D800. The D800, despite having a slightly better focus point spread, is larger and heavier and I do a lot of travel photography so I'd ideally like to keep things light where I can. Also it's virtually twice the price of the 610 and I don't think I'd see the benefit for the extra outlay.

Telephoto zoom:
Current (DX): Tamron 18-250mm
Considered (FX): Nikon 28-300mm (purchased)
I wrote about deciding on the Nikon 28-300 from the available options. It's also one of the reasons I chose to stick with Nikon rather than taking the opportunity of switching systems to try Canon- the Canon equivalent is far outside my price range. Is it the sharpest? Hell no, but it's a decent lens for a decent price and it provides the flexibility I was looking for from this piece of my kit.

Portrait prime lens:
Current (DX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8D
Considered (FX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (purchased)
This was an easy decision, standard cheap 50mm f/1.8 DX prime has straight equivalent for full-frame bodies. £150. Job done.

Super wide-angle lens:
Current (DX): Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Considered (FX): Tokina 16-28 f/2.8, Sigma 10-20 f/4-f/5.6, Nikon 14-24 f/2.8
The Nikon equivalents of the Tokina wide angle are crazy expensive (for a hobbyist, anyway). I had a brief panic where I thought that Tokina's FX model wouldn't offer an equivalent field of view to the DX equivalent and I'd be stuck but it turns out the 16-28 gives a maximum 107° vs. the 11-16's 104°. So it seems that the Tokina 16-28 will be a definite, the only alternatives being stupid expensive or f/4 max. I've taken a look at Tamron and Sigma's offerings in this space but Tamron don't do ultra-wides for full-frame cameras and the closest I can find from Sigmas is a 10-20 f/3.5 which offers 102°. So likely going to be the Tokina but shout up if you know of a good F-mount super-wide.

This was far, far longer than intended.