A friend and I recently went along to a banger racing event near Aberaeron in mid Wales and asked the officials there if they minded us taking photos…to our surprise they welcomed us with open arms and treated us like long lost brothers! They got us to sign in as race officials, gave us high-viz vests and said “Go where you like, just don’t get run over”! So here’s a few shots I took I’m happy with 
These photos were taken at Penglais woods in Aberystwyth this afternoon where the bluebells are in full bloom. These protected flowers are absolutely beautiful and litter the forest floor and they are a joy to photograph. I’m hoping to plan another trip to the Penglais woods soon too because it’s a beautiful place to see even if you’re not interested in photography! You can see a Google map of the woods below at Google here
Dusk on The River Towy, originally uploaded by Steffan Harries.
I’ve complained a lot over the last 12 months about how badly I’ve suffered from owning a cheap filter kit and in the last few days I’ve finally been able to get myself a decent one! My shiny new kit compromises of a Lee Foundation holder, Lee 77mm Wide Angle adapter ring, Hitech 1.2 ND, Hitech 0.6 ND Hard Grad. I really can’t compliment it enough and it goes to show that you really do get what you pay for! The quality is outstanding!. The holder sits incredibly close to the front element of the lens to prevent any light leaking in and the Lee foundation holder is also adaptable because it’s supplied with additional filter blades.
Lee are undoubtedly the best photographic filter manufacturer out there but are also the most costly! This is why I went for the Hitech filters because from what I’ve read about them they have the same neutral colour as Lee’s filters but weigh less and are a helluva lot cheaper! I’ll be putting them to the test over the next few weeks and months but the early results speak for themselves
Both these images were taken on an extremely windy evening in Aberystwyth. I used a B+W 10 stop Neutral Density filter to get a long exposure and washout the sea and clouds. I love it! That filter is fast becoming a favourite. I’ll keep this post simple and leave it at that
I’ve been using Cokin P-Series filters with the wide angle hold for a while now and it’s alright. I’d give it a six out of ten. If Cokin got they’re act together and fixed this colour cast problem then I’d give them ten out of ten! It’s the only thing holding them back and I fear it’s going to force me to replace my Cokin kit sooner or later. I’ve binned at least a dozen shots because of it and I’m not sure I can live with it anymore.
On the left is the unprocessed image as it came out of the camera with a huge pink/purple cast and on the right is the colour corrected image. For some images the warmer tone is nice but I’d rather have control over the toning of my photo rather than have them cast like this. This shot was taken using an ND4x and ND8x stacked over each other. Stacking NDs seems to make the cast more prominant but it’s pretty visible regardless of filter stacking.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve had some pretty decent photos from these filters and some have even been explored like this one and others that have done well that I’ve nearly binned like this. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on Cokin but I’m tempted to move over to using Hitech filters because of this…and I’m not the only one!
It’s marmite. Some love it. Some hate it.
Way back last December I was fortunate to land myself this deal and to say I was a happy chappy would’ve been a major understatement. Well in any trade it’s true that every now and then you must re-invent yourself in order to attract some business and what not. Nothing is more true of this than with photography. After I moved from an APS-C camera (cropped sensor) and got a full frame body I found that I had to completely re-learn everything I knew about photography! All of a sudden focusing distances made more of a difference, depth of field, vignetting and a whole field of jargon that once made sense to me suddenly caught me unawares! It was as if somebody had said “Right, here’s a football pitch. Now go play hokey…“. The rule book and gone out the window and been re-written.
There’s more to full frame than there seems you know? For instance. A focal length of 50mm on a full frame body is…you guessed it, 50mm…but the same focal length on a standard APS-C sensor is actually more likely to be around 75-80mm! This also means that aperture and focal length cause varying differences in depth of field compared to the equivelant settings used on cropped camera bodies. And before you know you’ve forgotten how to photograph everything! It means re-learning focal lengths, distances, aperture values, shutter speeds and sometimes even subject matter! I’ll tell you one thing though. Full frame is unforgiving. Make a mistake on a full frame camera and it’s obvious. Any dust spots become twice as visible as before and the same goes for slight miss-focusing. Everything becomes insanely hard! So hard in fact that only now around 7 months later I think I’m getting my mojo back. Sure I’ve taken decent photos in that time. But I’ve had to work and sweat at them a lot longer at the same time too.
Compare the above photo to this more recent photo. The first one is alright. It’s a close up, almost macro, photo of a milkshake bottle composed on a third however the shallow aperture meant that I slightly miss-focused for the image. Only slightly mind, but it’s enough to distract the eye. Compare that against the sharp image I took yesterday where after I’ve had time to learn how to effectively use the camera I can now not only compose a shot, use an effective depth of field but also introduce more complex elements such as using longer shutter speeds to create movement in the sky. I think what I’m trying to say is it’s not all down the camera…and neither is it all down to the photographer. They say a car is worth more than the some of it’s parts…I think the same applies toward photography…
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