This is a morning shot looking southwest across Derwent Water towards Catbells, about two and a half hours after sunrise. It’s a first pass edit of 3 long exposures (10, 20 & 40 seconds) merged together as HDR. Once back from our trip I’ll reprocess on my large screen to try and reduce some of the aberrations.
As a camera the iPhone 3 is often criticised when compared to other manufacturers’ phone cameras let alone small compact cameras. It’s low resolution, poor lens and limited controls make it easy to see why. But, with a little luck and imagination you can still get some interesting photos. Hopefully the images I posted from my London photo walk a few weeks ago, and the ones below from Mullion Cove in Cornwall, go a little way to demonstrating this.
These shots were all taken in the middle of the day.The light was pretty harsh with a lot of glare from the sea. We walked down the harbour and climbed over the wall and onto the edge of the cliffs. The composition options were pretty limited here, with the interesting scenes looking straight into the sun. I suspect that if I hadn’t broken my DSLR in the morning I would have moved on and looked for another location. But all I had was the iPhone so I started snapping. It was a little tricky to get the horizons straight, especially as the screen was too dim when facing into the sun, but I was pretty impressed with the camera’s results.
This first shot was a compete shock.
With next to no control over the exposure, I had expected there to be lots of glare and silhouette, but I hadn’t expected a beam of sunlight pointing straight into my shot! Ok, so I can’t really take credit for it. After all it’s an artefact from the lens, but it I was pleased nonetheless.
I took a few more facing into the sun before facing away a little for the next two images below. They are still pretty silhouetted but not too bad given the circumstances.
But I still preferred the ones looking directly into the sun, so I took these two looking down into the harbour itself.
The images above are all straight off my phone. When we get back from this trip I’ll run them through Lightroom or Photoshop. I think a little black and white treatment will help a lot. I’ll post the results if it works.
The Canon rumour mill is in full flow at the moment. There’s lots of speculation about what the major announcements will be, with new pro DSLRs and new video cameras being amongst the favourites. Not that Canon usually listen to me, but for what’s it’s worth this is my DSLR wish list if Canon truly want to live up to the hype they seem to be generating:
I probably won’t get all these, but it doesn’t stop me wishing…
I suppose the time had to come when when old 5d would start to have problems. Unfortuanately it’s happened while Kim and I were in the middle of a 2 week photo trip.
I was taking a series of of photos at St Michaels’s Mount in Cornwall. As usual for this type of thing, I set-up on my tripod and didn’t look through the view finder again until I had to recompose. The first hint that something was amiss was when I changed the exposure and the meter was telling me 25 seconds at f20, even though a few minutes earlier I was getting 2 seconds at f22. I checked the view finder and all I could see was black. My first thought was that the lens cap was on, completely forgetting that I had been shooting ok at f22. A couple of off/ons and hard reseting by taking the battery out didn’t help. So, I took the lens off and discovered that the mirror was hanging off. Fortunately for me I didn’t have the front of the camera tilted down otherwise it would probably have dropped out into the seaweed!
I guess that the earlier shots had caused enough vibration to shake the mirror off its mounting. Whatever the cause, it looks like I’ll need to get it repaired. I think I’ll also get it converted to infra-red at the same time though. As it happens, I was intending to do this anyway once I replaced it with one of Canon’s soon (hopefully) to be released 1Ds Mark III or 5d Mark II replacements.
Fortunately, Kim still has an old 5d Mark I, so we’ll be taking a 150 mile detour as we travel between Cornwall and the Lake District to collect her old camera from home. In the meantime, I’ll be using my my iPhone (thanks to Dave et al for the suggestion). I guess on the plus side, this didn’t happen on our planned trip to Iceland!
The majority of my images are taken using a tripod. I’ve been using a Manfrotto 055MF3 for a few years and been very happy with it. Over this time I’ve added a few customisations, mainly in the form of scratches and scrapes. It’s also saved me from what might have been a serious injury once when I slipped over on some wet beach rocks and landed on my back. The tripod, which was on the back of my rucksack at the time, stopped me from dropping between the rocks and cracking the back of my head. But, it cracked one of the tripod legs, which now has a permanent gaffer tape bandage!
One thing that has let me down though are the small rubber stoppers that fit into the ends of the tripod legs. They “wore out” and started to drop off after just a few months of use. I tried looking for replacements on the internet and didn’t see anything that seemed to fit the bill. But, my partner Kim found the ideal replacement in Wilkinson (for those of you not in the UK, they are like a very small Walmart specialising in non-food). She bought a couple of packs of walking stick rubber stoppers. They fit my tripod perfectly and are much chunkier and grippier than the originals which in my view is an added bonus.