Kodak Tri-X (2)

Another shot on the Nikon FM2N with Tri-X + Orange filter on a nice day looking down the Leadburn Road towards the hills above Peebles.

Kodak Tri-X

Shot on Kodak Tri-X 35mm, using my Nikon FM2N + 28mm lens and orange filter, 1/250th f11.

Edinburgh's Royal Mile

A former colleague has spent much of his leisure time photographing the goings-on along Edinburgh's Royal Mile. He is now so well recognised as a street festival photographer that he is to fly out to Dubai next week to be the official "street photographer" at a festival there. No doubt he'd have something to say at this image. I liked the view of this couple enjoying the pictures on their LCD outside this tourist trap shop.

A Wedding Snapper Snapping

Everyone who has viewed this wedding photographer at work has asked:
"Was the bride happy with this shot?"
I was out and about with the trusty Nikon FM2N and some Tri-X when I happened across this guy at work on a Saturday afternoon.
At first I thought he was using a 5D MKII and shooting video but no this was a still.

Ansel Adams The American Wilderness

At Peebles' Charity Book Sale on Saturday I picked up a mint first edition of this beautiful coffee table book for £10. I'm not a great Ansel Adams fan as I prefer my landscapes to have some human interaction, such as rock climbers halway up El Capitan or Half Dome, rather than just be pretty pictures.
This is probably why my first Yosemite book was Galen Rowell's "The Vertical World of Yosemite." Also John Cleare's "Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia" from the 1960s takes some beating for gritty black and whites.
In modern large format photography of British mountains Gordon Stainforth's series are as good as Adams with the benefit of comprehensive shooting notes.
For something a bit more basic W A Poucher's Guides, mostly shot on early Leica's are quite inspiring.

Painting Colours in B&W Using Photoshop Elements

Painting in Layers to add colour to a Black & White:

I have opened a colour image and converted it to B/W(Enhance>Convert to Black and White).

To add colour to the black and white image and make the car blue and the driver’s helmet red. Layer>New layer name it colour. Change the layer blending mode to Color in the drop-down menu.

Select the brush tool from the tool box and set the background colour to blue or any other color you wish.

To change the colour of the brush click on the squares at the bottom of the toolbox, the default is black and white. The foreground colour is ontop the background colour underneath. Clicking on the foreground color opens a color picker window.

Using the brush tool paint in the blue colour on the car body, I used a brush size 100px, opacity at 100%.

                          

It doesn’t matter if you go over the edges as the  next step is to use the eraser to rub out those bits.

The final stage with this image was to set up another new layer and repeat the above process to paint the driver’s helmet red.

Final Picture:

Panasonic GH2

Max's latest camera and the latest one to our household! The Panasonic GH2, he chopped in his Canon 7D on ebay to get this so here's hoping it's better for video.

Unable to use as yet as the lens adapter for Zeiss has not arrived.

50mm f1.8 Nikon

A bargain Nikon AF 50mm f1.8 pre AFD but very nicely made with metal rear mount spotted for £59.00 on ffordes.com see screen shot below:

Setting Up Adobe Photoshop Elements

I am about to start running an Adobe Photoshop Elements Course at Borders College so decided to post some handouts on the blog.

Setting up Adobe Photoshop Elements so that it gives you best performance:

When you first load an Adobe Photoshop program on your computer it is a good idea to go into the “Editor” screen and set up the Preferences. Once you have done this you will experience the best performance possible from the software on your Computer.



To Set preferences go to Edit (on the top level menu  in Editor) > Preferences is the last
choice in the drop down menu. Select it and choose General in the next drop down menu.
There is a Keyboard shortcut which is “Ctrl+k”

In Performance I suggest using at least 80% of the available RAM and as the program suggests set a scratch disk as a hard disk with a large amount of freespace.

Short Duration Flash - A Practical Application in Sport

My regular readers will remember the notes on this photograph, a few things came together.
As I arrived at the pool sunlight was burning through the window behind the lanes of swimmers, creating great out of focus highlights (bokeh). The sunlight also helped to highlight the water streaming off her arm and disguises the fact that I used flash.

I'd recently started at the Sevenoaks Chronicle(1996) and they'd given me a kit which included an Nikon F90 camera and SB26 flash - I'd wanted to get my hands on kit like this since reading about in magazines three years previously.
The flash allowed the photographer to get synchronisation at speeds faster than the usual sync speed of 1/250th, Nikon call it AutoFP. This has another effect it cuts down duration and distance over which it will fire. It is the short duration of the flash which has frozen the water pouring off Laura Tingley's arm. 1/500th would not have frozen it in midair.
I used manual focus and prefocused at a point in the water, (I didn't really trust AF), the settings were ISO 800 film, 1/500th sec f2.8 + flash. It was slightly overexposed on the colour neg. I only had about 10 minutes as it was part of a triathlon and I had other parts of the event to photograph.
On camera flash is essential for pictures such as this, in a live event it would be impractical to use a large device and powerpack.