photography – Page 17

Texture and Light

Feb 1, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

Texture and Light.

Processed in Lightroom 5.7

I met up with my friend Dan again for a brief explore around old abandoned building fairly local to us. The whole place has been both bricked and boarded up but we found one remaining access point that gave us easy entry. Lights were needed to move around the place on all of the floors except for at the very top, where the only light available was shining through the holes in the roof. The light outside was still pretty dull at this point so we decided to start shooting using our torches and my LED panel. However, as soon as it became bright enough outside, the feel of the building had completely changed. At this point we continued to shoot using only the ambient light. I think we both came away pretty pleased with our results.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blog, Mono, Street

The empty cafe

Jan 31, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

The Empty Cafe.

Hasselblad 500c, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm f2.8, Ilford FP4.

Blog, Mono

Prelude to happiness

Jan 26, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

Prelude to happiness.

Shot on Hasselblad 500c. Film; Ilford FP4. Developed by and scanned by my good friend Dan Smith.

Met up with my mate Dan to take the Hassleblad 500c out for a test drive yesterday morning. I have the camera on loan to get some use out of it as it hasn’t been used in quite some time. It was a bit hit and miss as I think that due to lack of use there are a couple of issues with at least one of the backs (did’t always wind the film on) and a number of shots didn’t come out. This could be down to poor metering on my part or maybe the shutter not firing correctly. I think that it’s just a case of putting more rolls of film through it to loosen up all the components. I still got a couple of shots I like, however,(this being one of them) and I’m quite fond how the light is shining across the front of the lens.

Blog, Landscapes

Ice cold morning

Jan 17, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

Tranquility. Looking out across a flooded field at Bodiam, East Sussex.

Cokin ND4 grey grad filter, processed in Lightroom 5.7.

I made a spur of the moment decision today to head out to nearby Bodiam. The sky was clear and there was a heavy frost covering everything, including my car, of which a good 10 minutes was taken up defrosting the windscreen. I arrived after a short but careful drive just in time for first light, I put on my hat, gloves and wellies, grabbed my camera gear and quickly set up to start photographing. The light was fairly even but to bring up the foreground grasses (trapped in ice and covered with frost) I decided to put on a ND4 (2 stop) graduated grey filter. ND Grads are an invaluable accessory for any landscape photographer and I really encourage you to invest in a filter system of some kind if you can.

I took a fair amount of similar shots to this, making slight adjustments in both composition and focal length (using my Sigma 10-20mm EX f4-5.6) but standing in the freezing cold meant that my fingers and toes started to go numb. This told me that I had been taking pictures in the same spot for far too long and it was high time I moved on to capture something else and my feet and fingers thanked me for it.

Other than my extremities getting a tad cold I had a really peaceful and pleasant time photographing. The only thing I encountered was that ice kept building up on the ND filter as well as on the top of my camera, so every few minutes I found myself having to wipe the filter with a lens cloth. Never leave home without one.

I’ll be posting more shots from today over the next few posts.

Thanks for reading.

Blog, Landscapes, Tips

Flow (plus Cokin Z Pro update)

Jan 13, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

Another of my unaffected shots from Sunday’s shoot.

Cokin ND8 Grad, processed in Lightroom 5.7.

Cokin reflection issue update (see last post)

So I took both adapter rings into work with the intention of sanding off the fronts when my friend Rob had the great idea of using acetone to remove the lettering. A quick rub with neat acetone and hey presto, the lettering is gone.

Now obviously not everyone will have acetone to hand but I reckon nail polish remover will do the same job, as it contains acetone. You’ll probably just need to use a little more elbow grease. This doesn’t get rid of the fact that they have been finished in shiny black but my main issue was with the lettering. Like I said in my previous post, the problem only occurs when the light shines directly in front of the lens but if I see the rim of the adapter showing in the future I’ll go down the route of applying some matte black paint to the inner edge.

I should also point out that at the time I experienced this issue I was using a 10-20mm super wide angle lens, set at 10mm. It might not be such an issue when using lenses without such a wide angle of view. More testing needs to be done though to analyse this.

Thanks for reading.

Blog, Landscapes, review, Tips

The Cokin Z Pro reflection issue

Jan 11, 2015Dec 23, 2015 Dave Wares

Aargh! What’s that at the bottom of my image?!

I should start off by saying that this will only happen when shooting directly towards the sun.

So I left home this morning (Sunday) to photograph the sunrise at Bexhill beach as the weather and tide looked quite favourable. Armed with my new Cokin Z Pro filter system I quickly checked the light levels and decided to put on the ND8 graduated grey filter to balance the light between sky and land. The sun hadn’t reached the horizon yet (but I had the camera pointing directly where it would soon appear) so with camera set, I started to happily shoot away. Now, I do look at the LCD screen to check exposure using the histogram often but I don’t constantly chimp the camera to look at the image itself, I just get on with the job of composing and shooting. It wasn’t until I stopped for a brief moment to review my composition that I noticed something across the bottom of my image. What was it? I hadn’t seen it through the viewfinder though it must have been there, perhaps it was just too faint for me to see. However, zooming in on the screen revealed it to be the writing on the adapter ring being reflected back onto the filter. A closer look reveals that the edge of the ring itself is also visible due to the shiny black finish. A huge f-up in the design process that I thought Cokin would have foreseen.

The only way of getting around this problem would be to shoot the scene unfiltered. Unfortunately in this instance filtration was essential and the two shots I took unfiltered proved this to me. Yes, I could have bracketed to merge later in something like Photomatix but I’ve gone off using this method for my landscape photography and leave it just for my urbex work. Somewhat annoyed and rather cold I packed everything up and headed back home.

As a person who shoots a lot of landscapes, I believe that having a good filter system is essential to help balance light. So, I have two suggestions on how the folks at Cokin could improve upon their adapter ring design. First would be removing the print from the front of the ring and to print it on the back, or have no print at all. Second would be to use a matte black finish to help cut down light reflection. I’m sure these ideas are not beyond the realms of possibility but until then its off to the hobby shop to buy some matte black enamel paint to sort it myself.

Just so I don’t finish off on a grumpy note, here’s a shot I manged to rescue using the clone tool in Photoshop Elements.

Thanks for reading.