Ride The Mighty Waltzer

If you can’t take great pictures when you’re at the fairground, then it’s time to take up philately.

This post is all about the funfair. From the little details, to the spectacle, to the personal. As a kick off, here’s three of my best friends – my wife Marie, my stepson Devon, and my father in law John – relaxing on the truly mighty Waltzer, at Skegness fair in August 2008:

 

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 32mm, 1/400 sec at f 5.6, ISO 800, hand held no flash. I couldn’t be happier with this shot. I pushed up the ISO as it was quite dark inside the Waltzer, and I needed a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. But I got a great expression on all three faces (Devon ALWAYS gives good face). The thing was moving at what looked like 500 miles an hour, so it was a complete lottery – but this was the very first picture I took in the Waltzer, and the best. Love it! I used the reliable Nikon 18-200 VR ’superzoom’ more or less throughout the day, it’s all you really need for a day out like this.

Now, here’s the science. I applied a custom Setting to the the pic above, and applied the same Setting to almost all of the pics in Ride The Mighty Waltzer, in Adobe Lightroom 1.2’s Develop module. Basically I de-saturated Reds and Yellows by 50%, applied a 50% Recovery setting to bring back some of the overexposed areas, and increased the Colour Temperature by 25%  to warm everything up. I then took it into Paint Shop Pro, applied a slight boost in Clarify, and gave it a final, quite modest Sharpen. I’ve done that across all but one of the pics in this set (I’ll say which one), to give it a nice, coherent look. I thought it would be nice not to overload this set with highly saturated colours, as is normally the way with funfair pictures. Instead, the colour palette is quite reserved. I’m pretty pleased with the results, creatively.

End of science. And now to the fun, where we join Devon and his Auntie Maxine on the chuffa train:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 170mm, 1/250 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Just one of those lucky moments again, I spotted Dev and Max waiting for the train ride to start, and gave them a shout. Got it spot on, nice and sharp and a lovely smile from them both. Notice the lad in front, on the right, who by his haircut is a tad too old to be riding this particular train without an 8-year old to make it cool. Either that or he’s one scary looking little kid.

This is the picture that I didn’t apply that fancy Lightroom setting to, by the way.

Talking of scary kids, this is ours, contemplating life with a group of eight adults who, within thirty minutes of arriving at the fairground, already wanted to stop for fish and chips:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/400 sec at f 3.5, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Looks like a dark vignette around the outside of the pic, but it’s nothing artificial, just the way the light fell off a bit at the edges. But I love this sort of natural light portrait, it makes a mundane moment into something a bit more memorable.

There are some fantastic chippys in Skegness, this one’s right at the heart of the pleasure beach. Devon’s just got his motor running, and all the grown ups seem to be obsessed with food. Despite his protests, the wrinklies put their foot down and we settled down at the trough. Devon ate a few chips and watched the other kids outside having fun.  Gritty urban portrait of a child wishing he was spinning around on some death defying machine, rather than listening to the sounds of lip-smacking and “Byyyyy this fish batter is reyt nice”. 

He perked up when he spotted that he had his own brand of tomato sauce:

 Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 24mm, 1/125 sec at f 3.8, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Six months later, at Stamford Fair in 2009, we found more Devon Stile tommy sauce by our favourite burger van. We like burgers too much.

Back outside at last, it was my (Andy’s) turn to hit the rides, so John (Marie’s Dad) grabbed the camera, and within minutes produced one of the shots of the day, curse him:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 112mm, 1/2500 sec at f5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note how I am paying respect to my mother in law in time honoured fashion, and note also how we are all being very soft by cowering like girls at the bottom of the water slide. Great picture, John.

And here he is proving how tough he is after a circuit of the Ghost Train:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 22mm, 1/160 sec at f5.6, ISO 640, hand held no flash. Looking well, John. Easy to look so confident on a kiddy ride mate. Let’s see you up on the bungee trampoline like your wife… You can see the effect of that custom Lightroom setting here, the car was actually rather redder than that.

Up on the Surf Rider, Devon was trying to stay calm:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 75mm, 1/2500 sec at f5.0, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Great fun taking action pictures on a sunny day – you don’t have to worry about shutter speed and as long as you’re focusing right (easy with these great modern lenses) you can freeze it perfectly. This thing was travelling at a heck of a speed, notice how cool Max is compared to the other three. She lives in Skegness and that’s a far scarier thing than any fairground ride.

Here’s how high it goes:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/8000 sec at f5.0, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Really great exposure, if you look at the original there’s plenty of detail in people’s faces. You can see the terror in Bev’s eyes.

Once again, here’s the difference between Bev and Maxine. Try and take a guess why my wife Marie is so feisty:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 200mm, 1/800 sec at f5.6, ISO 400, hand held no flash. She doesn’t half pull some faces, that woman. And once again, Max looks like she has just taken something lovely out of the oven, rather than screaming towards imminent oblivion in the rickety Skegness Pirate Ship. Note that I was sponsored by SkyCaddie for this trip to the fair.

Marie really hates the way her nose looks in this picture, but I had to include it as it’s just an incredible freeze-frame given how fast they were going:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/1250 sec at f4.5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. They were flashing by on this terrible machine, you simply can’t imagine how fast unless you were there. These great mechanical arms shove them out to the edge, and pull them back in, spinning the cars round at an unbelievable speed… it looks dead unsafe, and a really bad thing to do after a big plate of fish and chips, but Marie was game for it as always. Any road, just have a look at how sharp this picture is, it’s pretty unbelievable. Once again I am in awe of what you can get out of a good camera. I just stood there, wound it back to max wide-angle, and snapped away, grateful to not be sitting in there with them. Eagle eyed viewers will notice a slightly queasy looking John Oakley at the bottom-right. At this very moment he was regretting that visit to the chippy, and that lovely, tasty batter.

And finally, here’s one of my father in law with a handbag:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 112mm, 1/800 sec at f5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. He likes to try it out sometimes, you know, it feels nice and they’re really very useful, you can put your money in them and everything, and why shouldn’t a man carry a  bag anyway? John it’s nothing to be ashamed of. His weekend name is Wendy you know. And here also, at last, is Uncle Al Shepherd, Bev’s brother, partner to Max. They always look after us well when we come to Skeggy for a day out, roughly once a year. This was a great day, great fodder for taking pictures, lots of laughs, brilliant food, warm and sunny. Who needs Disney?

Look, A Baby Girl

And here’s the latest baby news – it’s a girl This was taken this morning, at Babybond in Peterborough…

Babybond Scanning machine, Peterborough, March 28th 2009. Although she’s lying in the same pose as she was in THIS post, a few weeks ago, it’s a coincidence. She was, as they say in baby jargon, ‘very active’ – which was spooky for Marie, as we were looking at a 16-week old girl dancing around like mad in her tummy, live on the widescreen, but she couldn’t feel a thing. Great to watch though . You look for a hamburger, apparently. This means something to people who know about baby scans.

Right afterwards we rang Marie’s Mum and Dad (Hi Bev, Hi John), who are currently cruising somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean on a big luxury ship with Marie’s Grandma and Grandad (Hi Annie, Ey Up Ralph). They’ll be looking at this any minute now, thanks to the miracle of on-board satelilite interweb, or something. We then rang or texted a whole load of other friends and family too. The best reaction was from our boy Devon (aged 9), who’s up at his Dad’s at the moment. His words were “Oh, COOL!”. And then he asked us to tell all his mates, if they called for him this weekend.

All being well, our girl will be with us in mid September. We’ve been given a due date of September 11th … yes, 9/11. Hard to forget that one. More pictures of this lass, many more pictures in fact, to come…

Letting Off Steam

Those who know me well have always been worried that I am a bit of a trainspotter, and I’ve always enjoyed living up to the myth. For the record, I don’t take numbers (big brother Mark, now that’s a diferent story), I don’t buy the magazines, but I do appreciate trains. They’re big, fast, and they appeal to the small boy inside. Diesel, electric or steam, if it’s big and runs on rails, I’ll stop and watch it go by. This saddens Marie no end.

One Saturday in April 2008, Marie and I drove up to Whitby, where her Mum and Dad were staying for a week’s holiday. It was a typical British spring day, we had snow, sunshine, rain, wind, and we got cold. But on the way there, we took a dip down into an interesting looking valley, and came across – quite by surprise – the little village of Grosmont, which has at its centre a station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. And as we arrived in the village, we were met by this magnificent sight:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 26mm, 1/100 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note rain spots on the lens – it wasn’t a day for the faint hearted. I had the trusty 18-200 lens on, one of the more pricey superzooms but crisp as nuts, especially with the handy VR switch on.

This is the ‘Union Of South Africa’, one of the last of the famous LNER Class A4 locomotives running in the world – often called the Gresley A4 pacific class, after Sir Nigel Gresley, who designed them (see the train named after him, below). These unique trains (more HERE) were among the biggest, and fastest, and the most handsome, ever built in Britain. They only made 35 of them, and sister engine ‘Mallard’ set a world steam record of 126mph in July 1938, just near where we currently live (on a downhill stretch near Little Bytham, between Grantham and our town Stamford). When I worra lad, every boy knew the name ‘Mallard’, and the speed, 126.

Marie admitted that it did look quite interesting, as much as a train can, but could we get on as it was raining. So we headed into Whitby where, after the blizzard, we took a pleasant walk out to the end of the jetty:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/500 sec at f 5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. To those of you who live in California, this is what’s known as a proper day out with proper weather. You carry umbrellas, plastic bags, your clothes have hoods out of neccessity, not out of fashion, and you wear sturdy shoes, for better grip on slippery pavements and wobbly flagstones which splash water in your face when you step on them. You don’t worry about your hair, because nobody can see you anyway, on account of the driving, horizontal sleet. Note small lifeboat heading out to rescue more drowning holidaymakers.

For a while I wandered off and tried to ignore the hurricane and the downpour, to take A Photograph. But, for once, my creative muse had left me, so I took some hurried shots of fishing boats and crab nets:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Forget art, and artistic wide angles, this was useless, I had to point away from the rain to get a clear picture, and even I – who enjoyed cold, muddy, skiddy Sunday morning football matches much more than the warm sunny ones – gave it up as a bad job.

We regrouped in the marvellous Hadleys Fish Restaurant – so popular a chippy, you have to book well in advance. Luckily we’d been aware of the legend, and had been in earlier to reserve a table for four weary, wet adventurers.

 Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 60mm, 1/125 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Just using the D300 as a quick point and shoot on a nippy day out, you can’t really beat the Nikon 18-200 VR lens. The camera takes care of the exposure, usually it’s bang-on, and the lens performs just like you’d expect it to (given that it costs a few hundred quid). The meal, by the way, was as good as the legend promised. The Platonic ideal of Fish and Chips…

On the way home I dragged Marie back into Grosmont station, where the sun was finally out and I took a few more cheerful, colourful pictures. Here’s a particularly cheerful, colourful one:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 11mm, 1/640 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I’ve worked on this one a bit in Paint Shop, but not a great deal – the original had some lovely rich, deep colours. Back on the Sigma wide angle, I’m uncritically in love with that lens, it lets you get right up close and still get it all in.

Here’s another, so close that the Andy Capp driver could have flicked engine grease onto my camera had he bothered to look:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. See the dark space to the left of the driver? There was a whole person standing there, but he was looking at me in a funny way, so I cloned him out, into oblivion. Lovely detail on this one. And my fellow trainspotters – Mark – might notice that big, blue engine and that 60007 number could only mean one thing:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 18mm, 1/125 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Isn’t she beautiful?

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/200 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. This is the ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’ itself, the original Class A4, in full steam pulling out of Grasmont station. Blimey I sound like a Rail Enthusiast hacker. But you have to admit, this isn’t something you see every day. Wonderful, isn’t it? Oh please, cynics leave now. Small boys young and old know what I mean.

This was a Good Day, the kind which leaves you feeling very much alive afterwards, and you can ask for no more than that, out of a day.

9 Years, 0 Days And Spilt Pepsi

Devon’s 9th birthday morning was loud, sunny and sticky with spilt Pepsi. Still, we try. As Wacko Jacko said (and he knew a few things about kids), children are our future, they are the doctors, judges, policemen, soldiers and scientists who will look after us in our old age. In the picture below, meet some of the people who will, one day, take over the running of this proud country:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 6.3, ISO 200, hand held with flash. From left: Harley-Megan-Ellie-birthday boy Devon-Ashley. We are quite simply doomed. We asked Devon, on his ninth birthday, what he wanted to be when he grew up. The depressing answer was ‘footballer’, although preferably without having to learn how to pass, tackle, defend or dribble. As long as you have ’skills’ these days, apparently, you’re sorted.  

My cunning plan this year – completely unsupported by a cynical wife, by the way – was to introduce Devon to the interesting world of arts and crafts, by way of an Airfix kit, which kept me and millions of other kids off the streets in the seventies. In my mind’s eye, I saw a charming scene, ‘AndyDad’ and stepson working closely together at a sunny dining table, carefully handling the tiny bits of grey plastic, sharing (and no doubt tentatively sniffing) the Airfix glue, enjoying the togetherness as our masterwork took shape. Maybe a WW2 U-Boat, or a giant Foden truck, or a Boeing 777-200, or maybe even – to show I’m not stuck in the past – a Tie Fighter (the new shape, mind) off Star Wars.

With neither the local model shop or Argos able to supply the perfect kit, I went instead for the easy option: The Simpsons, Series 2, on DVD. Somehow I doubt that a scale model of a Spitfire would have produced this sort of ecstasy:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Notice Ashley (right) is wearing a genuine shark’s tooth. The boys were up until eleven last night watching Series 1, so this was a good prezzie. By the way, I tweaked all of the pictures in this particular blog entry in Paint Shop Pro, trying to produce a slightly de-saturated look using the Channels tool. I went for a slightly blue-ish tint, I seem to be going through a sort of bluey phase with this blog. Come the summer no doubt it will be all golds and greens again.

To prove my fitness levels were still well beyond your average 44 year old, I took great pride in blowing up all the balloons this morning. They used to test astronauts on their lung capacity you know. Twelve balloons, no problem, including a particularly huge orange one which I stuck high up on the wooden pillar outside the front door, as a show of strength for passers by. Shortly after I took this photograph the orange balloon popped outside, with nobody near it. We decided it may have been a spider with sharp feet, and that at the moment of explosion the spider would have been launched violently into the sky at unknowable speed. Inside the living room, before the big explosion, the vital balloon-balancing competition was in its third minute: 

 

 Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/100 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Sharpened quite a bit. Devon ended up with a new football and new footy boots, the Simpsons DVD, a fantastic torch (which I immediately claimed as my own), a kit to build cardboard planes, and an astonishing amount of money. Devon could probably now bail out a fair sized bank. When the ice cream van came, he declared it was his round and the whole street grew fat and listless on Devon’s ice cream bounty.

Later on, we received the big visit from the Barnsley massive, Grandads John and Ralph, Grandmas Bev and Annie. I took them all to The Blue Bell pub in Easton On The Hill for lunch, which was gorgeous, and at the time of writing – six fifteen – we are still digesting our excellent Sunday dinner. Devon’s been outside playing with a hundred mates all day, and has attracted a lot of attention from the ladies. A good birthday all round.

8 Years And 364 Days

Devon is nine in the morning, and he’s having a sleep over. Earlier this evening we took him, Ashley and Harley to the OK Diner for a pre-birthday evening meal:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/320 sec at f 4, ISO 640, hand held with flash. Such nice children. From the left, Ashley – Devon – Harley.

I’ve taken a load of pictures this weekend with the Sigma wide angle lens, it’s such a favourite of mine. The results of a portrait session like this, at the Sigma’s widest setting, are almost always quirky and eye-catching. You just get in close and snap away. The lens is really designed for landscape shots, and it’s great for that of course (although I do covet the Nikon 14-24mm pro lens, maybe one day). The pic above was slightly colourised in Paint Shop Pro, as the flash had bounced off the red OK Diner table, making everything a bit pink.

These charming young people sat shyly and quietly throughout the meal:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 12mm, 1/200 sec at f 4.5, ISO 640, hand held with flash. Colours tweaked again in Paint Shop Pro, and a significant application of the Clarify command (a personal favourite to give a picture a bit of grit). Ashley and Devon could be brothers. We’ve tried to swap, but Ashley’s mum said no.

From the start, Devon made sure everybody knew it was HIS night. He’s not one to sit back and go with the flow…

  

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 16mm, 1/250  sec at f 5, ISO 640, hand held no flash. No messing around with colours in post-production, it was nice light briefly. This was Devon at the start of the meal, telling us all about the schedule for the evening. Waiting for their burgers, chips and milk shakes to arrive, the boys quickly found the Word Search on the kids’ menus – they found BUM and POO within seconds, but I kept them quiet for a while after offering £1 to the first one to find AEROPLANE. They eventually worked out it wasn’t on there, but it was nice and quiet for a while.

As I write this (9pm Saturday evening, March 14th 2009) the boys are squabbling over Lego Batman on the PS3. Soon, they’re going upstairs to settle in for a night’s hard partying in Devon’s room, where we believe we’ve uncovered a plan to wake up at 3am and play Xbox. The damage toll tonight, so far, stands at: one spilt chocolate milk shake (Devon), one smashed glass (Harley) and one broken picture frame (Jesse the cat). 

Marie, the lightweight, disappeared upstairs quite early on leaving me to police the situation. I think I’m doing quite well considering, having taken up my station in the kitchen doing this blog, and appearing to separate three squabbling boys every ten minutes or so. Ashley is the peacemaker, Devon and Harley the storm troopers. It may be a long night…

Cat Is Sole Survivor

Jesse is our sole surviving cat…

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 4, ISO 1000, hand held no flash. Just a silly quick extreme wide angle shot, mucking around in the kitchen. After eighteen months, five cats plus a stray, and two puppy dogs, our cheapest, smallest, toughest cat is the last man standing. We’ve lost two, sold four and given away one (Lucy the stray cat who became an honourary member of our zoo). We made a net loss in cash terms, but net gains all over the place in other ways… memories, no small amount of sadness and frustration, and lots and lots of love. And hairs. It all followed a sad event in our lives in late summer 2007… the pets helped us, especially Marie. Jesse was a farm kitten, twenty quid, he never took any nonsense from any of the others, and now they’re all gone (making room for the baby), he’s become the focal point. Tiny cat, lovely big character.

Look – A Baby

Look at this, it’s a baby in the making. It’s ours

Scanning machine, Peterborough Hospital, Feb 24th 2009.

I didn’t take the picture, but I took the shot, back in early December. Penalty king scores again. This little thing (gender scan in early April) is due in mid-September 2009. My first child, Marie’s second. I think you can guess how excited I am.  Marie’s been suffering with really bad sickness, but she’s a trooper and seems to have come through the worst of it. At the time of this picture, the baby is eleven weeks, four days. A minute later it started doing a magical little dance, arms and legs kicking, right there on the screen in front of us. There aren’t any words to describe how good that looked to me…

Charlie, Dog Without A Face

Marie’s Grandma Jean decided to get a dog, to keep her company after Grandad Ken ‘Shep’ Shepherd died in December 2008. She wanted a dog who was affectionate and undemanding, who would look at her adoringly, love in his eyes, tail wagging, craving communion between two beings separated by species, and language, but united in one purpose – to share years of contentment together, a pair of mavericks, a team, against the world.

Instead she got Charlie. He could be handsome, he could be ugly. Nobody knows:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Crazy wide-angle stuff, me taking pictures on the floor (again), Charlie was inches away from licking the lens (again), I kept chucking him back across the lawn to take a picture but the plucky bugger kept coming back. I don’t think he’d had a proper play with someone for a while, Jean’s been worn out already (and she’d only had him 8 weeks). Any road, I love this picture, the foreground’s blurry, the top of his bonce is over exposed and the background’s cluttered, but to me it’s got a disorganised cheerfulness which utterly suits Charlie himself.

What Charlie is, is a Shih Tzu, the oldest and smallest of the Tibetan dogs (he’s one of the smallest in Royston, South Yorkshire too).

Jean, apparently they live up to 18 years…

Charlie, less than four months old when I took these pictures, takes his new alpha male duties seriously. Here, he guards Jean’s back door:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5, ISO 400, hand held with flash. Yes it’s been a while since Jean painted her back door, but it’s very photogenic and I believe Charlie is fine with it. Great fun taking pictures with the Sigma wide angle lens, you can get very, very close and still get it crisp, lens-licking permitting.

If you’ve seen Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, you’ll notice Charlie has a certain Ewok quality:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 17mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held with flash. On this day, I played with Charlie while Marie and Jean had a one-hour circular conversation in which Jean repeated the phrase “ah don’t think he’s going to get much bigger” nine or ten times. And she’s probably right, Charlie won’t be jumping the high fences at Crufts, and he is just a tad over-enthusiastic about life for Jean’s tastes. A lovely wee companion, yes, but where’s the Off switch? Somewhere under all that hair, Jean, along with a face. Good luck, Charlie. Good luck, Jean.

A Little Old Manual Nikon Lens

A couple of weeks ago (see Here) I wrote about my middle-aged trip to a camera fair, and subsequently buying my first second hand lens, an old manual focus Nikon 100mm f2.8E prime lens. Using a manual lens, instead of an autofcus one, feels a bit like cooking a meal with ingredients instead of buying a meal at a restaurant. It’s slower, and there’s more chance it will go wrong, but there’s a greater sense of accomplishment afterwards. Of course, you can manual-focus an autofocus lens, but that would ruin my analogy.

Ken Rockwell, one of the web’s most popular / infamous commentators on camera stuff, reviewed the little Nikon 100mm here:  http://tinyurl.com/aefuar. “A great little lens: sharp, fast, and tiny.” Sounded good to me. It’s apparently the lightest telephoto lens Nikon has ever made, and is famous for being sharper than lenses costing 20x as much. At £40 (the price I paid at the camera fair) it’s a real bargain.

So I put it on my D300 and started to experiment:

Nikon D300, Nikon 100mm f2.8E prime lens, f-stop unknown, 1/3200 sec  at ISO 800, hand held no flash. Just mucking around on the kitchen windowsill with some coloured glass ornaments, trying to see how sharp I could get it. Pretty sharp, is the answer. Yes there’s me going on about sharpness again, but show me a photographer who doesn’t covet it.

Here’s the same thing, but with a green theme:

Nikon D300, Nikon 100mm f2.8E prime lens, f-stop unknown, 1/1600 sec  at ISO 800, hand held no flash. Notice the high ISO, like the last one – that’s the D300 working hard to make it easy for the photographer. From these two pics, I’d say it’s definitely been a bargain at forty quid. 100mm is a good focal length for portraits, so when the light’s good this summer I’ll point it at some victims.

I got a bit carried away, getting all abstract:

 Nikon D300, Nikon 100mm f2.8E prime lens, f-stop unknown, 1/320 sec  at ISO 800, hand held no flash. I haven’t worked out yet how to get the full EXIF data (the f-stop details) out of this lens, maybe you can’t. The above three pix were probably taken at f 2.8, looking at the amount of blur in the background. Nice colours here.

By the way, this is what the 100mm f2.8E lens looks like:

OK enough with lenses, back to photographs…

My People, In The Sun

A short while after we were married, Marie and I took Devon and my own Mum (on her birthday) up to Yorkshire to see Marie’s Mum and Dad. We wandered around Nostell Priory in the sunshine, and when we fancied a break, we had a few sandwiches outside. Inevitably, I took the odd picture:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 65mm, 1/500 sec at f 5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note 1) like father, like daughter. Note 2) Scarlett Johannson, eat your heart out. She’ll do for me.

Marie was on belting good form:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 62mm, 1/500 sec at f 4.8, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Look hard and you’ll find this pic elsewhere on the interweb, on the many armpit fetish picture groups.

John Oakley, Marie’s father, is not that much older than me. So when I say “Look this way, Dad”, it’s a cheap laugh for everybody (but him):

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 105mm, 1/320 sec at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Having a handsome moment.

I was using my walk-around workhorse lens, the reliable Nikon 18-200 mm f 3.5 – f 5.6 VR superzoom. A few months later I would buy the rather more expensive 24-70mm f 2.8 professional lens, which adds that extra polish and even more amazingly well-defined colours (almost hyper-real) to a photograph. But the 18-200 – which has its detractors on various web forums – is a super lens to stick on the front when you’re out on a casual family day, particularly if it’s sunny and you can keep the ISO down to a minimum.

Devon, with normal 8 year old attention-span issues, was usually to be found rooting around on the grass with the dogs:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 70mm, 1/200 sec at f 5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Nice and colourful, straight out of the lens. Like most of the pics in this blog entry, this one’s not been tweaked at all. The dog, Barney, is 0.5 seconds away from trying to lick Devon’s face. White ears to the left courtesy of an old-before-his-time Dylan, John and Bev’s loveably grumpy Westie.

As we walked back, I snapped another family enjoying a summer’s day out together (late July). I think this is a really nice one, which I should probably try and sell to a life insurance company for its brochures:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 130mm, 1/320 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I just love the way the light is caching this family, and once again there’s a richness to the colours – in an un-retouched image – which is testament to the wonderful Nikon D300.

And finally, I was shooting some old cows in a field when one strayed close enough for a decent snapshot:

 Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 120mm, 1/800 sec at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash.

Ahhh I love her really, Mum’s got a lovely smile when she chooses to use it. She’s one of life’s analysers, not known for her spontaneity – with the magnificent exception of a lifetime’s catalogue of catastrophically poorly-chosen comments, delivered just at the wrong moment. She’s a terrific Mum.