More Italy & San Marino pics

Venice & San Marino

I got back from a trip to Italy (primarily Venice) and San Marino about a week ago. Plenty of photographic opportunity, particularly for my speciality of HDR urban landscape. I think I'm reaching a consistant standard in this type of photography now, time to identify the weaknesses and target some work to improve on them.

50% markup for D610 product fix

I'm sure that most people have seen by now that the D610 has been unveiled. Let's not pretend- this is a fix for the D600 oil/dust/shutter issue. It's not a new model and a slightly faster FPS and marginally improved weather sealing aren't going to make anyone think otherwise. And that's ok. Nikon's drawing a line under the 600 and effectively admitting its problem and releasing a follow-on free from its taint rather than fix the issue under the same model name and risk it not being realised by your average Google-search consumer. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is, at time of writing in the UK, the 610 costing 50% more than the 600!

It's a problem fix for a documented and acknowledged issue. You want to relaunch as a new model to avoid the reputational damage? Fine, I'll play along. But don't charge people an outrageous premium to purchase a working product as opposed to a faulty one. It's more expensive than the D800!

I don't intend this blog to be ranty, God knows there are enough bloggers ploughing that furrow, but I couldn't help this striking me as an insult to their customer base on the part of Nikon.


Update: D610 price has dropped 10%. Body prices as per Amazon UK now stand as follows: D600 £1280 D610 £1599 D800 £1835

Introducing the D610?

There are rumours that the D600 is about to have a refresh, which is something I speculated might happen in an article I wrote about the D600 dust issue. I agree with NikonRumors that we're going to see next to nothing in terms of a spec update, just a new model to fix the dust issue that plagued (or at least was said to plague) the original model. I'm curious as to whether it will also improve the small focus area which is the other common criticism of the D600 model. Assuming this is the case, it'll still leave me with the tricky decision of paying the extra for the new model or picking up an even cheaper D600 (at time of writing, you can pick up a body for £1100, presumably this'd drop below £1000 with the release of the 610).

The D600 was launched almost exactly a year ago.

The Advocate

I'm delighted to report that high-profile LGBT interest magazine The Advocate has prominently featured a number of my photos in their selection for an article of photos from this year's Pride parade in Manchester. My Pride photos garnered a lot of traffic this year, even more than in previous years, and it's great to see them featured in this way.

50,000 views

A bit of a milestone, the usual Pride-oriented surge in hits has meant that the photos on my Flickr account just passed 50,000 cumulative views. Although unlikely to be troubling the Alexa rankings anytime soon, it's pretty decent for one guy with a camera he bought three years ago and had to learn what "aperture" meant. I think I've a realistic view of my ability now and the work I still have to do but it is nice to see the distance travelled to date.

Cheers to anyone who's ever appeared in one of my photos, especially if you didn't really want to. Cheers to anyone who's used one of my photos, in print or online, whether you paid me or not. Cheers to anyone who's given my photography a kind word, or indeed honest critique. Cheers to the many beautiful places who've given me someting worth photographing and to anyone who's stood, danced, partied, marched or rioted in front of my lens.

Cheers guys.

In fact, not only did Pride & Rushcart tip me over the 50,000 hits line but boosted me all the way to, at time of writing 73,000 views. That is to say that I got nearly a 50% boost to my views in the space of a week.



I'd noticed that my account seemed to be getting more hits for innocuous searches on various search engines of late, including Flickr itself. It's almost as though my visibility had increased. That, combined with the two large events over the bank holiday weekend seem to have been a perfect storm resulting in the hits spike.

Saddleworth Rushcart 2013

The day after Pride, a friend invited me to Rushcart in Saddleworth. Essentially, it stems from a tradition whereby a cart would be processed around the villages and hamlets and piled high with offerings of bullrushes from each with which to carpet the floor of the church. It’s a fascinating tradition and worth reading up on but more importantly from my own selfish viewpoint it makes for a great photo op, not least because those processing the cart are Morris dancers. I was astonished at how far some of the Morris troupes had come- from all over England it seemed, and the hundreds upon hundreds of locals (and presumably visitors too) who turned out to see the procession, the Morris dancing performances, the wrestling, the gurning competition and other British folk traditions.




As always, the full set are available on my Flickr account.

Manchester Pride Parade 2013

It was my home city of Manchester’s annual gay Pride parade on Saturday, one of the largest and longest-running of such parade’s in the country thanks to our sizeable LGBT community centred around the gay village of Canal Street and the surrounds. It's a great event and all of 100 metres from my home and it’s probably the best photo-op that the city has to offer so I did my usual thing of clambering up to one of the deep window ledges of the former warehouse buildings that dominate the area and snapped over the crowd as the parade went past. It’s been a decent tactic in previous years and resulted in a number of my more successful (according to recorded views) photos but it does mean that I essentially get the same shots year on year. I think next year I’ll aim to get to the front of the crowd and use my 50mm prime instead. Push myself to try different approaches.

The parade was good, if perhaps not quite as good as I've seen it in previous years. In 2010, they had Sir Ian McKellen and in 2011 they had a tank. That sets the bar pretty high. Still, some great costumes and the usual wonderful atmosphere.

The other observation is that my new 28-300mm lens really ain’t all that sharp. Now I knew it wouldn’t be given the range but I was expecting it to be sharper when compared with the lens it replaced (Tamron 18-250) and the price difference between them (the Nikkor being something like 4x the price), I was really expecting more. Nonetheless, I got some decent shots. Here’s a sample:

As always, the full set are available on my Flickr account.

Village Day 2013

I grew up in a small village in Northwest England and, just to live up to the stereotype, we have a village fête. Pretty traditional: bouncy castles, apple bobbing, face painting, homemade jam and all that stuff.

It was also the first proper outing of my new zoom lens where I was shooting at the long end. The first thing to say is that we were blessed with a sunny day, meaning I could keep the shutter speed way up (640/1), even while shooting in ISO 200 at f/8. I guess that's likely necessary at 300mm on a DX-format sensor. That out of the way, I found it performed pleasingly well. Yes, it's a touch soft on the long end. But only a touch. It's never going to be competing with a prime, is it? The VR helps, of course, and the SWM focussing is a blessing compared to my old Tamron 18-250. Overall, very happy and it gives me exactly the versatility I was looking for. I'm pleased that I opted to get this over the (cheaper & presumably sharper) 70-300 since I was shooting at the full range, swithcing from zoom to wide shots at no notice where I wouldn't have wanted to change lenses.

Bizarrely, the small handful of photos I uploaded pulled in nearly 1000 views to my Flickr account yesterday. I guess the kids love quaint rural funsies. Also dancing girls.

Drop saturation - technique or gimmick?

Above is a photo I took at a protest march a couple of years ago. It's the only example of a photo where I've used selective drop saturation to isolate a subject. It's a simple technique and there's a lot about but I'm wondering whether it's more of a gimmick than a legitmate technique. It's a quick way of making a subject leap out from the picture but could it be too easy? Is that a thing? Could it be/is it overused? And is it always an improvement? Take a look at the two photos below, which I took at a party over the weekend. I'm not sure that the processed photo is actually an improving and probably detracts from the original rather than adding to it, although I still like it. Now I've found a simple tool to achieve the effect, maybe I'll start to use it more and see if I reach any conclusions.

First 28-300 outing

I had the first opportunity to use my new 28-300mm lens last night. A friend of mine held an "indoor garden party". Overall, really impressed with it in all kinds of ways. It's my only SWM (silent wave motor) lens so its autofocus is superfast and really good in low light compared to my 50mm prime. It's also definitely giving me the versatility that I need although last night didn't provide me with the opportunity to test out the long end of the lens but given the low light, high ISO, wide aperture nature of what I was shooting, I'm very happy with the investment. Hopefully it's as good on the long end (I'll get the opportunity to find out at my city's Pride festival next month) and I can't wait to try it on an full frame body.

More Machinery

I'm continuing to use my new HDR software, Machinery, mostly to revisit shots from my 2013 trips to South-East Asia and the USA. The above shot is one which has come out favourably from the process, especially compared to its former Photomatix equivalent. The natural HDR look that Machinery pitches for (as of v2.8) totally eliminates the 'halo' effect that so frequently plagues HDR output as well as getting truer blacks. I'm certainly getting better shots out of it. I still intend to do a proper like-for-like Photomatix vs. Machinery at some point, though.

Manchester Day Parade

It seems like a lot of my entries of late have become rather text-heavy. Better try and liven up the place with some photos, hmm? These were taken at the Manchester Day Parade, a parade in its infancy to stir up a bit of local pride. It's not a big thing but hopefully it will continue to grow. These photos are a touch soft, it's what finally convinced me to upgrade my lens from the cheap Tamron super-zoom I was using.