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.

The D600 dust issue

For those of you not aware, the D600 is known to have an issue whereby dust and/or oil collects rapidly on the sensor, manifesting as spots and smears on photos.

I'd not really thought about blogging about this, firstly because it involves going into a level of (mechanical) technical detail which is an area in which I would not normally dwell and secondly because there's a huge amount of content out there already on the subject. What convinced me to write on the subject was that all the other content I could find tended to only focus on one facet of the issue and a lot of it has not been updated as new information has come to light or attempted to reconcile its own content with other content on the web. I thought I'd attempt to summarise everything I've encountered in my research on the issue. An article that covers everything, from perception to causes to solutions, hopefully in a succinct manner, updating as I discover anything new.

Perception: Is there actually an issue?
Not famed for being a source of universal agreement, the Internet is divided on whether there's an issue at all. The ever-high-profile Ken Rockwell has said that he thinks it's an example of Internet gossip but this would seem to fly in the face of user after user after user who are reporting firsthand experience of the issue, not to mention that it's been reported by no shortage of experts such as LensRentals, petapixel and dpreview. A number of other commentators have gone along the "all cameras get dust on the sensor" route, but this seems to be missing the point that those citing the issue are stating not that "it collects dust" but the speed at which it does it. These aren't first-time camera owners, they've had DSLRs before and are saying that the D600 gets it much faster than any other they've seen, sometimes right out of the box.

So yeah, I think there's an issue. At least for a sizeable chunk of the D600 user base.

What do Nikon say?
Given that the issue had been reported since the product launched in September 2012, it wasn't until February 2013 that Nikon acknowledged the issue. Reports prior to that include stories of cameras being sent in for servicing being returned with the amount of dust described as being "within acceptable tolerance".

Even Nikon's announcement from February is somewhat half-hearted. It's not a "yes, there is an issue" so much as "we hear a bunch of people are unhappy, here's what you can do about it". And that is to send it to them for cleaning. Shipping at your cost but the service should be free.

Is dust a big deal?
So it's dust on the sensor. Just clean it, right? Sure, that works, but be aware that a typical report of the issue is that it manifests from only a few hundred actuations. Do you really want to be cleaning your sensor (or sending it off for servicing, even) that frequently? Not to mention that I believe self-cleaning may actually void your warranty.

What's causing it?
Short answer- nobody really knows. There are a couple of theories around mirror box scratches or short shutter curtains.

Is there a permanent solution?
Since it's a hardware issue, something physical within the machine, it seems likely that there's nothing the user can do. But what about Nikon? A number of users who have returned their D600s to Nikon stated a service category of B1 or B2 on their service reports. Both of these denote that camera parts were replaced (B1 being minor, B2 being major). Are Nikon replacing parts that cause the issue with alternate versions that prevent it? This would also fit with some reports of speaking with Nikon customer service, although these are hard to verify. Does this also mean that new runs of the 600 are being manufactured with these new parts? Possibly, but we've no real way of knowing (or at least I've not found anyone who's compared the parts suspected of causing the issue on older or newer models).

One thing worth mentioning is that there have been reports of the issue apparently improves over time.

Are all D600s affected?
Difficult to say. Nikon's serial numbers work by region so it's harder to tell what's a 'newer run' (the first digit denotes the region) and thus whether it's a 'bad batch'. From the research I've done, it seems that cameras get hit (or at least some users report it) regardless of country, run etc. If newer models are being produced with fixes, it doesn't seem to be apparent from the available evidence. But then not all users say they have the issue so could random bodies really just not have it? Conclusion: Do I get one?
Let's review. From launch, it seems there was an issue affecting a good portion of the cameras. According to some, that gets better. If it doesn't, apparently Nikon can fix it for free if they've not already fixed the route cause on new units.

I'll be honest, it's given me severse cause to hesitate purchasing but I'll keep an eye on news for it while waiting for old stock levels to die down and probably take the plunge before too long.