Actually this title is deliberately ambiguous, though here I’m only going to post on the subject of tripods et al, not camera manufacturers and how they support camera-owners.

So, do I/you need a tripod? Well, it depends a lot on what you are shooting – for street photography a tripod really isn’t appropriate. If you can REALLY hand-hold relatively long exposures at appropriate apertures at sensible ISO, no you don’t need a tripod (but, can you REALLY do this???).  Practically, and after looking at the results, I find a tripod makes a HUGE difference, yes, in-body or lens stabilisation can make a big difference, but  in appropriate situations the tripod is the only answer for me.   [Why spend a lot of money on a good camera and lenses, then shoot in a way that camera movement is the most important factor in the resultant image quality?]

So, if you have a tripod, and use it, do you switch the stabilisation (body or lens) off? The advice is definitely to turn it off – but is your tripod really stable, even with delayed action, if the wind is blowing? I understand why the advice is to turn it off, but I remain unconvinced, and personally I’ve never seen any evidence that when I have forgotten (or just not bothered!) to turn it off that there has been any effect on the image with any of my cameras.

Tripods are quite bulky and heavy – at least those that are of any use are! Flimsy, cheap, light tripods are generally of no real use at all. Monopods – well, it may depend on how you use them (try to position and use them with your 2 legs and the monopod acting as a tripod), but some serious tests suggests that using a monopod can be worse than just hand-holding! I’ve used a Manfrotto 55 with carbon fibre legs for some years – reasonably light, quite versatile (latest versions make changing the extender from vertical to horizontal much easier, but STILL one or the other, no tilt options on the extension. Some of the Gitzos, with adjustable tilt extensions, look even better, but frighteningly expensive. Currently I’m using a 3 Legged Thing – Brian is promoted as the light, most versatile version, but Eric seems to me a much better option: yes, a little heavier and bulkier, but MUCH more rigid (I have the original Brian, and the later Eric). The latest 3LT Eric is what I use most of the time, but for some more specialised situations the Manfrotto 55 is still my choice at present. The biggest problem I have with the 3LT at present is the mounting plate – it projects beyond the camera body on the EP-3 and GF1, so that some lenses cannot be mounted without a hone-made spacer!

My Blipfoto project suffered a blip in early February, when I received a very polite email from them pointing out that borders are not permitted – I’d used an image I liked shot on the iPhone 4S with Hipstamatic: this put a border on the image automatically, and I hadn’t really thought about the implications. I was sufficiently upset about breaching the rules, if accidentally, that I discontinued the Blip version of the project then.

As mentioned in the previous post, I’m finding the photo-every-day project difficult, and on the whole it makes my photography less enjoyable, though I’ll stay with it as long as I can – some images appear on 365project and my Photo Diary page, and sometimes on Flickr as well.

I’m almost always using micro four thirds cameras now – the image-quality is more than adequate for use on computer screens, and also any prints that I can produce here (A3+ maximum), and of course they are much lighter and smaller (if you include the lens) than any other interchangeable lens camera, and the lens range and quality is excellent. I do sometimes use the Sony A55 as it has a larger sensor, but the A900 is ‘relegated’ to the role of studio camera due to its size and weight, and of course my age!

I’m replacing my Smart car, partly as a result of the problems a simple puncture caused (locally, imagine how much worse it would have been if it had happened at a photo workshop in NW Scotland). While I wait for the new car, I don’t like using the Smart (imagine the complications if it got damaged before I take delivery of the new car), and that is restricting my mobility, and what photographic equipment I can carry with me – either walking or on the electrically-assisted Brompton bicycle. This focusses the mind more on using the iPad as a VERY portable accessory for photographers, but although I used it, the A55, Eye-Fi card and Shuttersnitch very effectively recently, I do still find the apps available on the iPad are limiting – I believe this is largely due to limitations imposed by Apple rather than the apps themselves.

Colour management – being  (NOT) satisfied with how an image I have worked on will appear on the web, and on print, has been a huge problem for me in the past. Spyder 4 just announced … barely a month after I received my Spyder 3!! Frustrating, but I think the Spyder 3 kit I bought, which includes printer/paper calibration, will make life much easier (well, it already has!).

I’m finding the 366 days a year single image very upsetting – I want to ENJOY my photography, and having to go out to shoot an image every day may motivate some people, but I find it a pain in the … posterior. I’m sorry, but I have a life outside photography, and some days the weather, location, health, mood, just don’t motivate me, and if I have to take a photograph I will produce a really rubbish image (like today), but other days I produce several images that *I* like. Please don’t misunderstand me, those who are motivated and capable of shooting a brilliant image every day are to be congratulated, but it’s just not my scene.

The new Fuji camera and lenses are exciting – but not cheap, quite big, and the way the camera responds to the user (the ‘user interface’) has not been reported on yet, and is quite important to me. I date back to the Pentax slogan ‘Just hold a Pentax’, and for me it was so important, though YMMV! From reports so far, I think that Sony NEX cameras fail at present on the  ’Just hold’ factor, and Fuji haven’t received that message before either. For me, and it’s entirely a personal thing, the Panasonic cameras are the most intuitive to use – maximum control over how the camera performs, and in  the most obvious way for me! If the Panas don’t appeal to YOU, just choose what YOU  like, but I hope you will not feel that you need to tell me that I am wrong in what suits ME – constructive comment welcome though!

Lightroom 4 BETA has now been released – potentially at least as exciting as camera news! There are some good features in the spec, but experience so far is rather disappointing. So, book (Blurb) support and  Soft Proofing, but Apple’s Aperture has offered similar support for a long time (though Apple books, not Blurb). Soft Proofing was potentially (for me) a huge benefit, but so far I cannot find a way of preventing it changing the border/background colour, which makes it almost impossible to judge what soft proofing has done! An existing image that I had  previously round-tripped to Nik Silvereffex 2 as  a TIFF could not be updated for the metadata. An image I had processed in LR 3 seemed to look very different in LR4, and updating it to LR 4 processing made it even more different. Yes, this is a beta, but I’m seriously worried to have had all these issues in the first, 1 hour, session using it! A

As a postscript, I can understand some of the changes to the LR Develop module, but I think there are hints of ‘dumbing-down?’. Personally, and it just the way I have used LR, I’d have preferred to see more ‘power user’ features, but I suppose that would potentially damage the sales of Photoshop!

UPDATE: Just watching the excelling videos by Juieanne Kost on Lightroom 4, which make several things clearer, not least how to change the background colour when soft proofing!

Personally I really like having projects, as they give me some additional objectives, but I’m already finding the one-photo-per-day idea quite frustrating – some days I have lots of images, and some days none, and I want to ENJOY my photography, not have it become a chore (I have to shoot another image even if the weather is horrible, I’m unwell, other things to do, just not feeling motivated!). So I’m already not sure (on the fourth day!) that I will stick to this project.

None of the images I’ve used so far had any real merit, the first day was particularly bad as I rushed outside to shoot the first thing I could see, as the light was failing and it was just starting to rain. Today’s image must be a theme used countless times before, so I don’t claim any originality, even though I’ve not see any of the undoubted many previous images!

Comparisons

I had to stay in for delivery of a Pocket Wizard kit, and by the time it had arrived the weather had taken a turn for the worse. I really must try to get outside for some different images tomorrow!

I’m really an available-light photographer, but I do use strobes for some work now. I’d used some cheap flash triggers until now, but they fail more often than they work. The Pocket Wizards are a ridiculous price, but if they work it is worth it – I have wasted so much time and money on the cheap substitutes in the past. I’ve seen some reviews which not only comment on the price of the Pocket Wizards, but also criticise the build-quality. I find this difficult to understand – they seem well-made to me, and I’m a mechanical (and later production) engineer.

Oh, and of course the image did involve 2 exposures, one general shot and one of the screen, separately adjusted and then combined. I should probably have taken steps to avoid the highlights from the lights on the oranges, but life is too short! I should probably have bought more oranges as well, to fill the background …

I DON’T use iPhoto deliberately (Lightroom or Aperture are my preferred choice) EXCEPT that it seems the default/only way I can deal with removing images from my iPhone/iPad.

So, I removed the iPhoto trash, gained about 10G, then found some other images which were in iPhoto that I did NOT want there (not really sure how they got there), and got rid of those too. I now have around 30G extra storage available. I guess I should see if there is anything else that has somehow got into iPhoto which is really irrelevant!

The plan at present is that what was my blog now becomes the main entrance, or home, to the web site, with a few minor modifications – and that is where you are now! The Photo Diary will probably disappear in due course, as I intend to incorporate any new entries into this blog/home page. For the time being, the galleries of photos relating to the BCLM, Cycling, Friends of Priory Park and Landscape will be accessible via the side bar on the home page, but actually the content will not be changed immediately, and these pages will still be in mobileme until I get around to recreating them elsewhere.

You can still access the web site in the same way using the address http://www.mikehessey.co.uk, but you can alternatively use the shorter form http://mikehessey.com.

Please email me if you find any problems, and please be patient while I gradually implement the remaining changes.

I’ve found the iPhone quite entertaining to use in the past, but it does depend on the type of shot, and images which are taken using Hipstamatic, or are subsequently seriously modified using Instagram, seem generally most rewarding – they are taken more for effect than accuracy. Yesterday I was also trying out the new olloclip fisheye/wide-angle/macro attachment. It’s fairly cheap and attaches cleverly, though it is rather easily moved, and when it is in place it covers the switch-off button of the phone. Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, the optical quality except at the centre of the image is very poor:

The image above is an example shot with the fisheye attachment.

I’ve been quite impressed by using the iPhone ‘stitching’ apps, such as Photosynth, for producing panoramas – image quality is quite result, and distortion is not such an issue (of course sometimes the reason for using a fisheye is specifically to get distortion). Naturally they aren’ usually much good if the subject, or something in it, is moving.

Overall, though, I found the experience of using these limited cameras yesterday quite frustrating, and I’m unlikely to try going out again without a camera which can be controlled properly, and can shoot RAW, though the iPhone will always be with me, and no doubt I’ll try using it for effect sometimes.

Below are three more images from yesterday, all taken with the basic, program-mode-only, P&S. You may recognise the first one, taken previously with a more serious camera.

So, this enables Apple to persuade me to spend more money and buy a bigger hard drive on a future MacBook, which is good for them?? No, it simply persuades me that an additional MacBook Air with a small SSD drive would be totally inadequate, so I won’t buy one! It used to be called shooting yourself in the foot. Please don’t tell me about the Cloud – I have serious reservations about this (security as some recent incidents show, and some kind of accidental hiccup on one machine is then transmitted to everything else, with potentially disastrous loss of data), and anyway it is not cheap – a 64G iPad requires up to 64G for backup, let alone what else you might want to store, and if you are that sort of person (I’m not), there could be issues of making all the content available to some other people, which could be very embarrassing.

To repeat an earlier complaint, Apple are discontinuing their web hosting in 2012, and my main web pages are all hosted on their web server, so I have a very big job ahead soon to transfer (and reformat) all this material onto a new web host. I regret that in the process of doing this I shall probably just destroy some of the older content.

I spent last week at Lakeland Photographic Holidays (LPH) in the Lake District – the third time I have been there this year. I’ve made several visits in previous years, but this was the first time I have been in the autumn, and the colours were superb. We were also very fortunate with the weather, which was excellent most days, and free of rain during the daylight hours every day. Many thanks to LPH and the other participants for making this a great holiday.

I took only Micro Four thirds cameras this time – the Panasonic Lumix GH2 and the Olympus E-P3 for the bulk of the work, and a Lumix GF1 with an Infra Red filter attached to use possibly for some IR work. The GH2 was used mostly with the 14-140 lens and the E-P3 with the 14-150 lens, though the Olympus 12mm was used a few times as well. The GF1 got quite a lot of use, but not by me – one of the other participants had an accident with his camera and borrowed the GF1 and 14-45 lens for a couple of days. I did take a few IR images with it, but they weren’t very successful, partly because I found it impossible to see what I was taking with the very dense filter in place.

With the latest firmware the E-P3 was much better behaved than previously, and did not lock up at all, so that problem has been solved. I did however find another issue which I would regard as a bug – if you choose the option to retain the same display brightness whatever exposure and compensation you select, the histogram shown while composing an image does not change when exposure compensation is dialled in, which makes it hit and miss making exposure corrections! In the end I disabled the constant brightness setting, but this is something that is essential when shooting with manual flash in card locations, which I sometimes do. The GH2 happily does not suffer from a similar ‘feature’ – with constant brightness the histogram indicates the exposure of the image, not the viewfinder brightness. I also find the E-P3 lower control wheel extremely difficult to operate – all too often one ends up changing the wrong thing using it, and it needs to be used for many of the changes – the additional control buttons and switches of the GH2 make it far more convenient and pleasant to use.

I shot a few very short clips in video, using the E-P3 for that for the first time. I used the E-P3 rather than the GH2 simply because it was the camera I had with me at the time – normally the GH2 would have been my preferred choice.

I’ve now consolidated the images from the previous 2 visits this year with the ones from last week, and put them into a slideshow (on YouTube), and I’ve also put together a Blurb book of all the images. Most of my image processing was done in Lightroom 3, with the mono images processed in Silver Efex Pro 2, and a small number of images receiving some additional attention in Photoshop CS5. The slideshow was put together using Final Cut Pro X, and unusually I created the Blurb book using InDesign CS3 rather than Blurb Booksmart.

This was certainly a most enjoyable week, even though my images were as mediocre as usual.

I have to say that, in terms of iOS 5 on the iPad goes,  although the built-in Photos app is marginally better, it is still not much use as far as my interest in being able to use an iPad as a very portable means of processing photos, avoiding the need for a laptop computer. Nor have any of the apps yet advanced to the point that I’d be comfortable using them and an iPad, not a laptop with Lightroom or Aperture, but I still live in hope that some of the iOS apps will be able to make this possible if iOS 5 allows it, which iOS 4 did not.

On to Olympus. Oh dear, my problems with the E-P3 locking up pale into insignificance compared with the alleged financial scandals surrounding the company at present. But I’m only going to comment on the E-P3! After a lot of experiments, I seemed to have finally tracked the problem with the camera refusing to respond to some controls to the touch screen – if this was enabled, I had the problem sometimes, but with it disabled the problem had not occurred. I was living with this, but then Olympus recently released a firmware update for the camera, and specifically referred to it solving a problem on the E-P3 when using the EVF and if the touch screen was pressed. This fitted in with my problems – I was not deliberately touching the screen, but it is very easy to do this in handling the camera. Updating the firmware proved a problem initially, as the Mac verso of the Olympus software failed to recognise the camera. Happily I was able to overcome this by running the Windows software instead. A friend tells me he has had the same problem. What a good thing we both have Windows machines as well as Macs! Since installing the update I’ve re-enabled the touch screen, but I’ve not used the camera enough to be able to say if the problem is now solved. The only other issue I’ve had with the E-P3 was that the EVF fell off one day during a project – fortunately I heard it fall, and it was undamaged, but accessory EVFs really should have some kind of lock to hold them in place (this applies to the Panasonic EVF for the GF series too).

I still love the 12mm Olympus lens – great performance optically, but also mechanically, with the positive focussing system. The new 45mm lens is quite tempting too, but it doesn’t actually add to the range of focal length, and it does not have the positive focussing of the 12mm, though it is a fast lens, and moderately priced. It is o my wish list, but not very high up that list.