amipal photography

After I waxed lyrically about it , readers may well have expected a review from me by now of my "recently"-purchased Panasonic Leica f/2.8-4 50-200mm telephoto lens, and I do indeed plan to write one in time. However, I don't seem to be able to find the time to get in front of the keyboard for an extended period. So rather than leave you with nothing, instead I'll provide you with some example shots which I hope provide you with some insight into just how well the lens performs. Some of the images are with the 1.4 teleconverter, which I'll note in the information. I'm heading to Duxford for Flying Legends in a week's time, so will be able to show some images other than nature. Hopefully I'll be able to provide you with a more comprehensive delve into the lens next time I update the site. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these... Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 50-200mm f/2.8-4 ISO200, f/4.5, 1/1600 sec, 200mm ISO200, f/4, 1/250 sec...

Around this time of year, a sometimes get a nice bonus. This typically goes on camera equipment, as I rarely buy anything for myself the rest of the year.  I am fully aware how lucky I am to get this money in the first place. Last year when it hit my account, I rushed myself up to Park Cameras and bought the Lumix G9 . This year wasn't going to be a new body, after all the G9 is still a lot of camera, even after a year since its launch. No, this year was a lens-spend year, and I had many an idea formulate... Number one on my mind was that my Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm no longer provided the image quality that I've come to expect (I blame that with walking around with a clutch of primes these days). It had to go to a better home. But what to replace it with? Well, I had aspirations for the Panasonic Leica f/2.8-4.0 8-18mm ultra-wide zoom. I'd hired the lens when I headed up to Canary Wharf , and I couldn't fault it. Excellent build quality, fast focusing, brilliant ...

In January, I traveled up to London with my erstwhile friend for an evening's shoot around Canary Wharf. I've walked around there a couple of times during the day, and captured a few architectural shots (as well as processing a bunch in a science fiction aesthetic ). The purpose of our visit? The Canary Wharf Winter Lights festival. My friend had previously want to head up for this, but for various reasons it never happened. When he announced that he was booking a day off work and going up regardless, I jumped at the opportunity to join him. I didn't really know what to expect. I'd been told that there would be a variety of art installations which had the creative use of light as their medium. How well would this translate to photography? And what compositions could one shoot without the photo ultimately being a record of the artist's work? The works were colourful and varied. Some featured audio background to them, which lent some of them a very eerie atmosph...

And so 2018 has been and gone, meaning an end to my Photo 52 for the year. When I look back at it in it's entirety, I'm quite proud of the work I've accomplished. Photography isn't my job: it is my hobby, and so it is primarily something which I do in spare time (what little I have). The purpose of the Photo 52 project is to ensure that I pick up my camera at least once a week - a difficulty considering a busy family life. This maintains my ability to tweak-settings, and keep my muscle memory and general composition up to speed. More often than not, a photo for the week occur within the local vicinity. Only six out of the fifty-two weeks feature shots from places outside of the greater Brighton area, mainly trips to London (though also my first airshow in years). I really value and appreciate the opportunities to travel for photography, not least because it gives me some fresh subjects to shoot but also because I more-often-than-not do so with a friend of mine wh...

The week just gone was competition night at the club. "Man-Made" was the subject which, as you can imagine, can be pretty much anything as long as it isn't natural. This of course meant a lot of head-scratching, as the possible entries were so wide. Today I thought I'd share not only the photos I entered into the competition, but also the issues that I deal with when printing them, as well as the selection process itself. Let's start with selection. I make use of Lightroom's Collections so that I can easily group images without removing them from their original locations. This is simply as case of creating a new collection (in this case called "Man-Made - PRINT1"), and then going through my archives looking for things that may be suitable. Simply selecting the image and hitting the B key adds it to the collection - and then move onto the next image. In the end, I have a "virtual folder" of candidate photos for the competition, some of wh...

I had the luck of getting a ticket to the uk.shooters Halloween Meet in London on 20th October this year. Me and one hundred and ninety nine other photographers (I'm assuming they all attended) descended on London's Leake Street tunnel to shoot a plethora of models who had all been made up by professional make-up artists. Now, previously when I've shot portraits, I've relied on the G9's face-detect auto-focus to acquire perfect focus on the eyes. This has worked very well in the past, and I've had little reason to doubt the capability of the body as a result. But this shoot was different. Not only was the available light low (and I mean really low), but many of the models had make-up the skewed the human face. Or hair that covered large chunks of the face. Ordinarily, if I notice something going wrong, then I'll try to work out what is going wrong, and above all, why it is going wrong. In this case, the camera was struggling to find a face in the co...

Hello all! Despite the long period of inactivity, this blog is still active. I've just been a bit busy. But back to this post. Today I'll be talking about a trip I made up to London for an evening shoot at St. Paul's cathedral. I knew before traveling that I'd need an ultra wide angle lens to do the architecture any sort of justice. I've owned the Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm lens for many years (checks LR metadata - April 2012!), and it is a compact and light UWA whose performance isn't too shabby. Saying that, I've definitely noticed a diminishing in its capabilities over the years - whether this is down to use or something else, I cannot say. I'm simply not happy with the sharpness of the corners from it anymore. I've looked into replacing the M.Zuiko previously. I can't really justify the ~£1000 GBP price-tag of the Olympus f/2.8 7-14mm, nor the similar price for the Panasonic Leica 8-18mm, as I rarely shoot UWA these days. I shoot manual l...