Well, I wasn’t expecting it to immediately post…
[wppa type=”album” album=”1″][/wppa]
Coffee shop relaxation
This is the result of what I was going to blog when I was relaxing and having a coffee and sarnie, by the way of a very late lunch after a morning TKD session. (that incidentally was a sweat box, but very much fun 😀 )
Well, I thought I’d attempt the classic techie shopping and lunch trip – and by the by, have a nice coffee in a random coffee shop and do some surfing.
So, after getting one or two little items, which was a little less than I had thought, or wanted, but one store didn’t have what I was looking for, I thought I would sit down in MK’s Starbucks or Costa, and enjoy some gentle caffeine enhanced relaxation.
So – first off, I wanted Internet, you know, catch up on some of the news I’ve missed, maybe even write a blog post about something, simple enough I guess, my MacBook connected to “_The_Cloud” – but then I can’t surf without signing up – or remembering what I signed up with on my iPhone what seems like a billion years ago, and connecting and resetting my password would mean I needed access to email – which requires Internet access…. which.. yeah, ok see the problem ? (Astute readers will say why didn’t I read the email off my phone ? – well…… )
OK then, lets try my iPhone itself, and tether.
4 attempts at connecting, ok, I can’t whinge too loudly at that, I haven’t connected this MacBook to my iPhone (did with my old MacBook)
A tiny glimpse of Internet via my Galaxy SIII, so I kick off an update of a plugin on a website of min, but…… then nothing.
So that is Problem 2 – Vodafone, whilst saying I have 4 bars, and 3G signal (this being an iPhone 4S – no 4G), I have now lost the Internet. (so, back to problem about getting email….)
OK – try again, with my Samsumg Galaxy SIII mini, and although this connected first time (but, I have used that phone on this MacBook whilst I was on holiday last week), but, again, although the service provider is saying decent signal – I’ve got no Internet.
And the biggest pain in the arse of all – I didn’t charge any of my devices last night, so whilst I am now currently writing this on a MacBoook Pro in Pages instead of online on my blog, I’m doing it with only 11% of battery 🙁
OK – it reckons 0:39 hours left, which should mean I make it to the end of my steak and cheese sarnie and coffee, but, pretty much bugger all else.
So I’ve dropped the backlit keyboard off, and dropped the screen brightness down to a point where it’s dark enough to almost think the text is dark grey on a slightly lighter dark grey – and the battery life has now dropped to 0:35 remaining.
And the update of a plugin on my site, still hasn’t finished – the connection I have, tenuous at best, hasn’t been fast enough to update the page quick enough before I was careless, and lost the Internet.
So what I have done with this blog entry, is write it in Pages, so that I can get my thoughts down, and will upload when I get home, to something approaching a broadband connection.
Question is, will I get to the end of writing the blog entry before the battery on the MackBook dies ?
Chances are actually pretty good, it’s a decent bit of kit to be fair, but technology, batteries especially, don’t last forever.
Now my iPhone is at 15%, and GSIII is at 21%, and this MacBook is 7%, I’ve finished my coffee, and more than ready to go home.
So, technology makes things easier ?
Hmmmm, today, not so convinced, although I did want a nice relaxing time in a coffee shop, I got one, just not in the way I had envisaged.
I would have been better off reading a book, but my Kindle isn’t charged……
Social media integration
I am having a little play at the moment, and seeing if I can integrate this site with various social media sites, like Facebook…
…. So, here is the first post with that in mind..
😀
Ads…….
Well, it’s kinda annoying in a way, but I do really need to look at trying to re-coup some cost of running this site, and other sites and things I do, so, apologies, kinda, of putting some ads on the site.
However, the plus side is that there may well be ads that have some interest to you – so all in all, that isn’t going to be a bad thing overall, you might discover something you didn’t know about before, and, as I always have said – keep an open mind 🙂 .
I’ve decided to use Google Adsense…. why ?
Well, with this blog software it makes my life relatively easy, I don’t have a huge amount of time at the moment, so, I am going for some simplicity.
Whilst I work to get things how I want them, aesthetically, there will be some unpleasantness on the site, Sorry about that.
I should have a sign, “Men at work” 🙂
Is it raining in the cloud ?
I’m in the cloud, and I am getting cold and wet, it’s raining in my cloud.
Cloud services are supposed to be the saviour for corporations, and, I dare say there are a lot of really good real world examples where this is the case.
Take companies where they need extra processing power, as and when they need it, such as AWS,(Amazon Web Services) or Google Apps, or even, (for me – shock and horror) something like Office 365, which is all well and good.
However, let’s take me as a not so good example…
I would say that I’ve never had a normal setup for some regular Joe at home, granted, but, lets look at what I need.
Backup….. Well, sorta, it’s more like making sure I have multiple copies, but those multiple copies get synchronised across multiple devices, my MacBook, my Linux laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone., and maybe even a Windows machine if need something desperately to use Windows.
In short, I need a cleaner way of keeping all files on the machines up to date, so I’ve looked at Dropbox, Google drive, and even Apple cloud services.
So, lets look at the figures.
Dropbox, 500GB is $49.99 per month, if you pay in advance for a year.
Apple’s cloud services top out at 55GB, which isn’t even enough to back up the entire contents of my 64GB iPad – eh , what ????
Lets look at Google Drive, that is $49.99 for 1TB.
Question I guess is how much data I have.
Ok – when I first started to write this entry, the Documents directory on the laptop that I was writing this entry on was 3.6GB, so within the “free” range of all the available options, but as I have consolidated all my documents across a number of devices, that is now 5.8GB, which is now over that 5GB of free space.
However, this 5.8GB doens’t include my photographs – those, they take a little more than that – like over 100x as much at currently 450GB(ish) – and that includes all the RAW as I shoot in RAW format (and used to shoot in RAW+JPG)
That 450GB is a lot of data, and therefore well exceeds the Apple cloud offering by some considerable margin, but comes in the 500GB bracket for Dropbox and Google.
Now, when I go on a shoot, say in Wales or the Lake District, or say an air show, then I can easily burn through 24GB a day in photographs.
Ok, some of these are rubbish, that I really should get rid of, but, historically, I haven’t.
Taking that into consideration, I will easily burn through Dropbox’s “sane” offering, at least without having the 1TB option as a “team”.
That leaves me Google.
No real problem there.
But – let me look at another option.
I host my own gear, actually on the server that this website runs on.
It sits in a datacentre somewhere in the EU – Germany to be precise, (not that I am giving anything away here – it’d be trivial to lookup the IP address of this site and work it out)
Given that I have a bit of space left on the drives that this site lives on, so…. I installed “OwnCloud”.
From Ownclouds own description, it’s effectively an Open Source Dropbox-a-like piece of software that lives on an apache server and can turn that Apache server into a cloud instance, and OwnCloud has clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone/iPad and Android devices.
So – from the outside appearance, I can run my own cloud data storage services on a device I rent – i.e. this server in Germany.
I’ll admit this server doesn’t have the disk space to hold all my photographs – but I can easily purchase an upgraded machine, migrate all my stuff across, and then it would do, at least for another couple or three years I reckon.
So, for the moment, I have installed this server software, and a client for my Linux laptop, and my MacBook, and even my iPhone.
I have therefore started to syncing up this laptop, and that is where I have hit the biggest single failure in ANY cloud storage service.
Speed.
Non, not speed of the server at the remote end, or even the speed of the local machine running the client.
But, the speed of my link to the Internet.
No matter where I am, away from a corporate environment, like “home”, I have ADSL, and by the name of it, it’s “asynchronous” – so, the speed is faster one way than the other, in the case of ADSL, download from the Internet is the faster, by quite some way.
For example, the link I am on at the moment, is 4.4Mbs/ down and 448kbps up.
So, if I want to download an iso image for a new OS that I am looking at, or even the new Adobe Photoshop elements, that means I can download the files at 4.4Mbs/8bits = 550kB/s.
That means that a 1MB file will download in a shade under 2 seconds, but a 4GB DVD iso will take about 2 ½ hours.
That’s not too unreasonable as a general thing, I don’t need huge files often.
But, let me translate that to my problem.
My Documents directory will take around 2 hours to download.
However, that would be the end of the issue if I already had those files on the server, which at the moment I don’t.
I need to upload them……
…. at 448kb/s – which is a pathetic 55kB/s – that will take what ~25 hours ….
A DAY!!!!!
There may be some companies where they wouldn’t mind me going into work, plugging my personal laptop into the network during lunch say, or otherwise out of hours, and throw my ~4GB to any cloud storage service, without having a complete hissy fit either from a security perspective, or a bandwidth perspective.
However – these companies are likely to be the exception rather than the rule, so I’m stuck, personally, with any options for cloud storage.
I sure ain’t going to start talking about the whole Bring Your Own Device argument either, not here, not yet – it’s not the place, or crucially, the time.
The cloud works wonderfully within a corporate or educational/research environment, for say sharing documents, with colleagues in London, Leeds or even Los Angeles, as businesses and educational/research establishments will have fast, synchronous connections to the Internet, and in some instances, (like where I work) actually be part of the Internet themselves.
However, back to poor old me, and my requirement to use the cloud.
It will take me ~25hours to “seed” my cloud instance from this one machine, and this little laptop is a machine I don’t tend to have “much” data on – and it only includes my Documents, and nothing like my Music, that’s ~12GB, and of course it doesn’t include my 450GB of photos.
And therein lies the problem with the cloud – it’s not the cloud where it’s raining, it’s under the cloud, me, and you, at home, wanting to upload our data to the cloud.
Great when the data is already there, like Google Apps, but getting it up into the cloud, like my documents and photographs, is a giant pain in the back side due to the lack of speed on the network that has to be used to upload it.
Now, be clear, I am not going to blame this on the cloud, the cloud itself isn’t the problem here, not by a long shot, but on broadband, and the nature of the beast, a beast that is now severely flawed.
ADSL started life when all that one really needed to do was to download data from the Internet, and since about 1993 that is all most people have ever done.
However, the cloud is changing the game, for the better in a lot of ways, trouble is, the networks that were built to service the Internet for consumers historically, are now woefully inadequate to be able to keep up with the demand for data flow, and are essentially not fit for the new purpose of this, the “new” Internet and the new world order of “cloud” – certainly not cloud storage anyway, cloud applications, that is a different matter – that is all about sending data from the Internet to the clients.
One thing to look forward to is fibre connectivity.
If you can get it.
I couldn’t – well, at least not until June this year, as BT appeared to have screwed up with the rollout of FTTC – otherwise known as Fibre To The Cabinet, in my area – they missed a cabinet out in my, the newest of estates in the town I live in.
There are people in outer lying areas that have this capability – but no, not me, or anyone in my estate, and it’s taken BT a very long time to undo their screwup of missing out upgrading this one cabinet.
30 June 2013 is the date I might have been able to get Fibre based broadband to home, and yes, this will massively improve this ability to upload my files to the cloud storage provider of my choice.
Even then though, it will only be ~15Mbps – 1.8MB/s, which admittedly, will still mean it will take me a long time to upload my photographs – shade under 3 days, but under ½ an hour to upload my documents, a distinct improvement.
Like real clouds, the Internet Cloud, it’s great when you are in it, like I am at work, but for me, at least home-wise at the moment, whilst it isn’t raining in the cloud, I definitely am under a cloud, and I feel a little cold and damp as a result.
Elan Valley, the return to be.
I *still* blame my good friend, it’s all her fault…. 🙂
I am so enamored with the place that I want to go back, and spend the time taking some of the shots I missed. (principally due to light being wrong – i.e. the sun in the wrong place in the sky)
Having thought about it quite hard, I think I have decided that I am going to ride the route, yes, ride, by bike, and not the Harley I don’t have, but pedal power, human (sorta – it is me we are talking about here) driven.
I’ve already plotted the route, all 33.7 miles of it, here.
Scary thing is, as you can see from the link, that I am likely to burn through 5500 calories, and that is just with my weight.
It doesn’t take into account the weight I will be carrying camera wise – or even food and water.
Camera-wise, my 7D coupled with the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens on it’s own is 2.5kgs.
I may even take my EOS 1v, and potentially with a 24-105mm f/4 on it – which is another 2.5kgs.
I am also going to need around 750-1000ml of water per hour if it’s a nice sunny day.
Each litre of water weighs a kilo, so, depending on how long this is going to take me, remember I’m not going to be doing this as a single non-stop ride, I’m gonna need a lot of water.
Lets put this into context – 33.7 miles, it would theoretically take me no more than 2 hours to do if I’m riding my racing bike at my normal decent clip (about 90 minutes should do) – thing is though, I’m going to be stopping regularly to take photographs, so my pace is going to be well off a “normal” ride, as low as 6mph – maybe even as low as 4mph.
I’m also not likely to do the whole thing quite in the order that it is listed as a “route” – as I will need to be in different places at different times of day, and that route plan doesn’t take that into consideration.
Remember here, I am going here to take photographs, and to do so requires light, and more importantly, light in the correct direction, hence the to-ing and fro-ing.
It’s no good to try and take a shot of some wooded area, with a narrow slice of sky in the background, which is nice and bright from the sun, but the wooded area is shaded from light, because the sun is the wrong side – as the contrast between the two gives you a shot that is basically a completely blown out sky, or a wooded area so under-exposed, you may as well have taken a shot of a black piece of card.
Anyway, back to that distance at the minimum, those 33.7 miles is therefore going to take me 5-8 hours maybe, so that’s 5-8 litres of water, or another 5-8kgs to carry.
And I’ve not touched on food….
6000 calories is a helluva lot of food, one site says 76 hard boiled eggs.
Hell!!! I’m not gonna carry 76 boiled eggs !!!!!
Or even 20 McDonald’s Cheesburgers………..
So, whatever the food requirements are, I am going to have to take them with me – lots of high density energy food is going to be required, but again extra weight.
To carry all this gear, I am either going to need to be a little mad and have it all in a backpack on my bike, or better, in a little trailer I can hook up to my bike, they really ain’t designed to have a trailer hooked up to them.
That means my mountain bike – which is about a billion times heavier than my racer…. more weight..
More weight = more calories = denser food…
Or just say to hell with it, and understand that I am going to be in a proper calorie deficit that day…
Damn – too complicated to figure out the calories, so buy myself a bike trailer and just do it with what I “feel” will be right.
That, I think is my final answer….
Now – when is this crappy weather going to break so as to be decent enough for me to do this at a weekend ?
That is the bigger question.
Wales – Part 2, Victorian Engineering Excellence.
I blame my good friend.
It all started with a conversation with my friend about the potential for meeting up in Wales during my holiday, and the routes that we both take to virtually the same place that we frequent in Wales. (like about 3 miles apart!!!)
Me, I like night cruising up the motorway in my RS4, cruise control on, clear road in front of me, no idiots about, and due to my normal, preferred, time of travel, listening to the “Best time of the day show” with Alex Lester on BBC Radio 2.
My friend however, well, she drives up the back roads, and up past the Elan Valley.
It was this discussion about the route, her recommendation that it was a beautiful place, and my interest in the fascinating history behind the Elan Valley that made me decide to wonder home via this route after my few days shooting my fast jets.
Well, I wasn’t disappointed, not by half.
It’s amazing!
It’s like all Victorian Engineering, supersized, supremely simple, but at the same time, craftily complex.
It’s immense, solid, even overkill, but, beautiful, and all well engineered.
If you don’t know about it’s history, or engineering, then I recommend going here to have a look at some of the history.
(Yes, it appears to be a little kid orientated, but, I have to say, I did enjoy reading it, and it did it’s job – provide more enticement for me to visit)
Bottom line, is that the Victorians wanted to give Birmingham some drinking water, and wanted to do it without a pumping station, so, they built a few dams, and one long pipe, and let gravity and nature do the rest.
Yeah – gravity…..
It’s gravity that feeds the water from the Elan Valley all the way (70 something miles) to Birmingham.
Now, to me, that is impressive.
What is also impressive, is that most of this pipe from Elan Valley to Birmingham is covered, and hidden – that took some thought to get done.
Well, enough about the engineering itself, and back to the lovely views that it gives.
When driving around the valley, there are times that you have a nice gurgling stream next to the road, and driving round a corner, you get a *WHAM* – an immense view of a stone damn, rising strong, proud and forceful out the ground to hold back the vast lake behind it.
When I was there, there were a group of engineers on the road above one of the damns, abseiling down the front face to clear the face of weeds and small trees that have started to grow in the cracks.
To do this, the water level in the lake behind had been dropped to allow them to work on the face of the damn without tonnes of water flowing over and down.
I don’t know whether this made for an extra *wow* factor, as this particular damn, Claerwen, being dry, was just so “solid”, I am not sure what he view would have been like had their been water flowing over it.
There was another damn where water was flowing over it, and that one glistened beautifully – at least what little of it was in sunlight when I saw it around 16:00 🙁
And that brings me to my “problem”.
The time of day that I was there, not just at that damn, but overall.
Sunlight plays a massive part in landscape photography, and there are times, like 16:00 in the afternoon, where a location is near as makes no difference, damn impossible to photograph satisfactorily, let alone have the ability to create something truly marvelous, simply because the sun is in the wrong position to light up the scene to do it justice.
All the data you can look up, and plan around, sometimes doesn’t help, you just don’t know what the view will be like until you are there, and in my case, there at the wrong time of day, and that can be a frustrating thing.
The good news is however, there isn’t anything stopping you going back, which is precisely what I am now planning to do 🙂
I loved the day over there, and other than the minor frustration of finding places that I can see the opportunity of a great photograph if I’d been there at a different time of day, I am rather happy with the shots that I have taken.
And with that – here are my photos from the day.
Hope you enjoy the photos.
Wales – part 1
Well, relaxation at last.
I’d “engineered” some time off between jobs, so, it was holiday time.
Wales is one of my favorite places to go, the scenery is astonishing – and I occassionally get to find low flying jet planes.
This time I might have met up with a good friend as well – but alas, they came back the day before I went 🙁
We keep missing each other in Wales by a few days every time… guess that is the way of the world.
Anyway, time to relax, pull out my camera, climb a few mountains (yes – they are a bit bigger than a “hill” 🙂 ) and shoot some planes, or sit and chill in the peace of the mountain air and let all life’s little niggles drain out.
Whilst walking, and being atop a mountain I also get to meet a fair few people as well, so hi to Mark, Paul and Ruud if they are reading.
This trip, I appear to have gotten pretty lucky, I’ve got a fair few decent shots IMHO, and I have now processed them and uploaded them here.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them.
I have seen the Light(room)
Well, I blame my friend Cath….
And I am sticking to that.
It is, as always with Cath, in a good way.
The other week, a group of us went to RIAT on the Sunday this year for a good day out, and the opportunity to have some good shooting of fast jets (and not-so fast prop planes, but with the BBMF – awesome planes)
Well, about 24GB of photos later (for me anyway), some of us were sat around munching pizza and reviewing our great (and sometimes not so great, again, more referring to me here) shots.
I fire up mine in Linux using Gnome Photo Viewer, Cath fires up Lightroom, and detail freak fires up Windows 7.
Well, that’s a pretty full complement of alternatives between us.
That, in it’s own right is hilarious, and worthy of a celebration that there is that much choice about, as we have all, in our own way, taken a different path.
However, the one thing that did stand out, at least to my mind, was the power of Lightroom.
Who used that out of the three of us ? Yup, the pro photographer, and yup, of course, on a MacBook.
Opened my eyes I can tell you.
I am used to copying all my files off my CF cards onto an external hard drive.
I then write a script to go through all the files, do a little re-name on them, and then create a new directory, and then move all the RAW files into that new directory.
As I am paranoid, I then back them up to another hard drive, and then sync one of the two external drives to a NAS.
I then go through all the files using Gnome Viewer, and each time I get to a photo I class as “best” – to at least worthy of using, move it to a directory called “Best”.
If those photographs are feeling a little, “missing”, then I will fire up UFRAW, and do a “fix” or, enhancement with that, and maybe use GIMP to do a crop…
I then re-sync all 3 devices, 2 ext drives, and the NAS, so I’ve not lost anything.
Cath showed me, through the gift of Lightroom a whole new, more efficient way of working, just use Lightroom to import the RAW photos, rate them how good they are, and then process them, including tweaking/correcting them for body and/or lenses.
… Oh – and tag them with the date, context, place etc….
And sod the JPG’s from the camera, just take RAW, and process them in Lightroom to JPG if required for my web gallery. (and even print them from Lightroom)
So – guess what happened the following week at work – when my work PC decided to tell me my Adobe Flash was out of date????
Show me a link to a trial download of Lightroom – so, once home, fired up the link again, and dropped myself a copy onto my MacBook.
I’m hooked.
Completely.
… and utterly.
I put it to the test on the photographs I took at RIAT.
Out of the 1800 or so that I took, I rated them, and ended up with 255 shots that I then processed.
Lightroom also then processed them, correcting for my lens (my Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8), then processed them into a web gallery, using flash to create a slideshow, which I uploaded here.
I’ve called it “OLD” as I don’t expect it to be around long, as whilst it was a good test of what Lightroom can do, it doesn’t fit in with the gallery software I use to showcase my photographs, and to be honest, much as that software has been a pain recently, I don’t think I will be replacing it any time soon.
One of the things I will say, is that there is a considerable difference between the JPGs produced by the camera and the JPGs produced by Lightroom.
IMHO, and it is very humble, I am really preferring the output from Lightroom, even with almost no “tweaking”.
Again – let me say that again – I prefer the output from Lightroom.
Is this me looking at the JPGs produced from the camera on one machine against ones on another machine – NO.
Same machine.
And – yeah, I have calibrated the screen.
And yeah, in the same program – in the case of viewing the output, this was using either Safari or Chrome on my MacBook.
The JPGs produced by the camera are too “watery”, it’s the best description of the output I can give.
They are lacking a certain something.
It’s a frustrating position.
It means that on each every shoot I need to process the shots through Lightroom (or equivalent) to get a JPG out for display in a gallery.
It’s a different way of working I guess, but, as I alluded to earlier, I think more efficient.
Well, me being an Open Source software advocate, is there something I can put onto my Linux machine that does the same thing as Lightroom ?
Would it give me the same workflow ?
I had a look around, and found a GPL’d piece of software called Darktable.
I’ve aded the Ubuntu repositories to my 10.04 LTS box (that yeah, is no longer supported, but need a bigger HDD to do a reinstall) installed it, and will report back on it’s functionality as and when.
Whilst I was looking at Darktable tonight, I looked at the status of GIMP and 16bbp editing, something that I personally haven’t worried about, until now.
At the moment, it works, but only apparently in the development versions, nothing stable.
OK – for now, putting off using it for proper manipulation.
There is one other thing that is rather interesting with all my investigation and trial work.
At *NO* point did I even contemplate going down the Windows route and whatever tools I could get on Windows – Lightroom/Photoshop included.
It simply didn’t even enter into my mind as an option, not until I had almost finished writing this entry.
Is that because I haven’t used Windows as a home tool in so long now that it is out of my conscious thought ?
Is it because I don’t know Windows well enough these days to make an informed decision ?
Actually, I don’t know, probably the former, even though I have to use Windows at work, its use as a tool for me, is just irrelevant.
With whatever the outcome of my experiments with Darktable, and the wait for GIMP to do 16/32bbp, I’ve decided it’s high time to finally bite the bullet, and go Lightroom and Photoshop on my MacBook.
I just don’t think that as a photographer, ameteur as I am, I can justify *NOT* going down this route now, not after seeing the power and simplicity that it can give me.
Even though any photo reviewing and processing is going to take some time, like it did in the days of film, anything that can cut it down, and gain me extra time in the “field” shooting, that has to be a blessing.
For the moment, for me, that is Lightroom at a minimum.
Doing it this way does give me a minor headache now though….
OSX doesn’t read my Ext3/JFS formatted disks….
That, however, is a problem I will look at another day.
Thanks Cath, I have a different photographic related problem…. x 🙂
(One I prefer to be honest)
RIAT in the Rain 2012…. (and the sun)
Well, at the weekend, it was that time of year again – RIAT.
RIAT, properly known as the Royal International Air Tattoo, held at RAF Fairford, which isn’t that far down the road from me, is listed as the worlds largest military air show, and as a fan of technology, and the challenge of photographing the fast moving jets, attendance is almost mandatory.
It’s also a time to meet up with friends, some of whom I see relatively precious little of.
This year, two sets of people made some really strange decisions.
Silverstone/FIA, and RIAT organisers – they made the British F1 Grands Prix and RIAT fall on the same weekend – eh what ????????
So people like me had a choice – go to one or the other, sorta.
I could have gone to the GP itself on the Sunday, and RIAT on the Saturday, but, as my friends wanted to go to RIAT on the Sunday, that is missing the GP.
It also happened to coincide with the first time a Briton has reached the Final of the Mens Singles of Wimbledon. (Pity he only won the first set – but let’s face it, he was up against Federer, arguably one, if not, *the* best in the game of all time)
Please FIA/Siverstone and RIAT – don’t so this in 2013.
(At least RIAT already has it’s dates for 2013 – so I guess this is directed at FIA/Silverstone to NOT hold the F1 GP on 20-21 July)
Back to RIAT……
Last year I bought myself a 6 day FRIAT ticket (MACH 3 it’s called) , which gave me entry to the first 3 days – Wednesday->Friday, where a lot of the aircraft arrive at RAF Fairford, the two days of the actual air show, and then the Monday where all the aircraft depart.
THe FRIAT MACH X tickets are an expensive way of getting in, but well worth it – the seats in the FRIAT enclosure provide you with a damn good view of the action. (which last year I didn’t use on the Saturday, as my friends only had general admission tickets, so I stayed with them).
Just to highlight that – I got a lovely shot of a Panavia Tornado GR4 taking off on full re-heat, with a nice cone of flame out of the rear.
This year, however, I decided not to do that, and also as I was properly disorganised with tickets for everything this year, missed out on a 2 day FRIAT ticket as they were all sold out.
I therefore went with a 2 day ticket to the air show itself, and the Friday arrivals, and the Monday departures.
Why go to both days of the air show ?
Simple – last year it was rather wet on the Saturday, and the display’s started very late, and therefore there was less of a display, and I didn’t want a complete wash out, so, both days is a kind of insurance of one day being poor weather.
Well, it’s now Wednesday evening, and I haven’t really had the chance to go through all my photographs of the weekend yet, and process them ready for any kind of publishing.
The only photographs that I have had processed, were literally processed, the old-fashioned way, chemically.
Yes – I used film.
…..
…..
Now you have picked yourself up from the floor, and gotten over the shock – you may be asking yourself why I chose to take some photographs using such an “old” medium of film.
Well, I do have film cameras, and have had since my father passed away.
I inherited three 35mm cameras from my father, as well as a 110 type film camera, 2 medium format cameras (6×6) and a digital camera.
I do run film though all the 35mm cameras, and as two of them are identical Minolta X300’s, I actually have black and white in one, and colour in the other, to give me some creative opportunities.
The “problem” I have with all the 35mm cameras I inherited from my father, is that they are all manual.
Manual everything, including focus.
Now, I love this when doing something like flowers, sunsets, and maybe even subjects that move relatively slowly, like my daughter, but……. with something travelling at well over 200mph – yeah, I’m not quick enough to focus.
So, wishing to get the joy out of film, and also to try and force myself to slow down, and enjoy the moment of taking, I looked for, and purchased a new film camera.
Well, I say new, new to me, it was second-hand off that well-known auction site, Ebay.
Having said that it wasn’t new, it may as well have been.
It’s in immaculate condition, and first thing I have done is pull my 24-70 f/2.8 L off my 7D and plug it on.
What did I get ?
An Canon EOS 1V HS.
It’s gorgeous, I love it.
The first film I have run through it was to prove that the camera actually took decent photos, and I used an old film, so the colours on the results are a little “off” – but I have actually proved the camera works, and that ignoring the slightly odd colours on the film, it takes good shots with my 24-70 f/2.8 L.
I went for a Canon EOS EF device, so that I could use my existing lenses on the body (most of mine are EF, not EF-S – the only EF-S is the 18-200mm which lives on the 50D), and was initially looking for a EOS 1-N, but the 1V is newer, so plumped for that one.
Now, going back a second or two, I said I bought the film camera to slow me down, but I also said that for fast moving objects the fully manual cameras would be potentially inappropriate.
(yes, I know that I could use the film cameras on fast moving objects, and in fact I have done – shooting F1 cars – but definitely need lots of practice there due to the requirement of fast fingers for the focussing.)
There are two slow down drivers.
The first, is the fact I can’t see the photograph I have just taken until the film has been processed, so the result is unknown.
The second, to a lesser degree, cost of processing.
The first slow down is the most important for me – the not knowing.
This focusses my mind on making sure that the photograph I am taking is “right” – first time.
For static objects, this means making sure what I want is in focus, and looking at interesting points in the view to focus on, checking, and adjusting the depth of field, the framing, perspective etc.
For faster objects, like cars and planes, the autofocus has freed me of the worry of screwing up the focussing with the manual X300’s, and has allowed me to practice things like panning, and choosing the moment for the shot, rather than relying the high speed continuous shooting mode to take a sequence of shots, some of those in the sequence might be bad, but the sheer number of shots that you have taken means that there is a high probability that there will be a good shot somewhere in that sequence.
All in all – another step towards more fun.