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.

Machinery 2.9 example

Further to yesterday's post, I thought I'd show a quick example of a single exposure enhanced with Machinery HDR 2.9. It's not the perfect example since there's some moderate JPG artefaction happening but overall I think you can see the effect. Nothing too dramatic, just a basic preset easily toned down if it's thought to be too strong (it's probably a little over-sharpened) but comparing it with the base image on the left, I think it definitely adds a desirable enhancement.

Machinery HDR 2.9

One of the things I like about the Machinery HDR software is that it's clear that it's continuously being improved and developed behind the scenes. It seems as though every other time I start it up, there's a new version to update to. We're now on version 2.9 which professed "improved ghost removal" (something I'd commented before was weaker when compared with Photomatix). I'll be honest, I'm still not seeing it but the overall improvement in HDR quality from, say, v2.6 means that I can often remove the single exposure that's causing the ghost and I'm still able to get the overall effect I want from only two (JPG) exposures. Of course that doesn't help if you've got movement between all three frames, but it's something worth having nonetheless.

As I said, the overall improvement to HDR is great- it achieves an increasingly 'natural' HDR look (something they've always strived for). Blacks are well preserved, something I always struggled with in Photomatix where it would make my pictures look washed out, the famous HDR halo effect is all but banished entirely and, perhaps most surprisingly, it's able to achieve great effects from a single JPG exposure. Even for non-typical HDR subjects such as portraits. I'm now using it as a generic post-processing tool for pictures I wouldn't describe as HDR per se (e.g. the snap of Sacha, above). I'm seeing it really emphasize depth in a number of shots and it definitely bears further experimentation.

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.