Newcastle Quayside Sunset

I’ve bought a little bit of new kit over the last couple of months, been on a great holiday with my lovely woman, ran a couple of workshops and even been on a workshop or two myself! Plus, inbetween all this I’ve found a small amount of time to shoot some landscapes and family shots for myself.

Canon 50mm f1.8: Photo from

Right then, first up on the new purchase list is a Canon 50mm f1.8 prime. This is a cracking little lens, despite it’s “Blue Peter” or “Heath Robinson” looks and should be on the top of everybody’s first purchase list when they buy a DSLR. Infact every new camera should come with one of these lenses instead of those terrible 18-55mm kit lenses! This great little lens is sharp and has good contrast and colour even when compaired to its big brothers the Canon 50mm f1.4 at £245 and the Canon 50mm f1.2 at £1045. The best thing about this 50mm is that you can pick them up for around £80-90 or you can do what I did and get a great second hand one for around £45!!

Canon 50mm f1.8, f1.4, f1.2: Photo from

Now with all this said you might be wondering if this lense has any drawbacks, well it has two. The first is the build quality, its cheap plastic through and through, even down to the lens mount, but its cheap! Then second is the number of aperture blades, or lack of in this case, as the f1.8 only comes with 5 blades. The higher number of blades and their curverture is something you only get when you pay the big bucks and we’re not and this can make the bokeh suffer a bit. But then again its only 10th of the price of the f1.2!!

For the money its a fantastic lense and one that every budding photographer should have, even if its only to get you started! If you’d like a more indepth review of this lense and many others, then check out a great website called “The Digital Picture”

Crumpler_Industry_Disgrace_01

Next up is a simple little thing I should have bought a long time ago and don’t really know why I didn’t to be honest! It’s a padded camera strap to replace those pointless ones that come with all cameras no matter how much you pay, from £350 to £3500. There doesn’t seem to be a huge range of straps on the market, but the Cruppler Industry Disgrace seems to one of the best and at only $30 Canadian dollars a real bargain! It’s light, well padded and has no markings shouting out which camera you have on display. After getting this whilst travelling in Canada I never really knew I was carrying my Canon 40D, with grip and 24-70 f2.8 the strap distributes the weight so well it’s a joy to carry around.

VisibleDust 724 Superbright

Another set of products that I picked up whilst travelling in Canada is from the small company Visible Dust, who work out of Canmore, Alberta, and manufacture a fantastic one of a kind cleaning system for your cameras sensor. These guys seem to have quickly become the industry standard and are always pushing the boundarys with their products. I popped into their small office to pick up some gear whilst travelling through to Banff and they were delighted to see me, esp since I was about to drop $200 Canadian on purchases!

VisibleDust Quasar

 The two products that I decided on were their two latest updates to the already excellent range and include the 724 Superbright sensor brush and the Quasar sensor loupe, both pictured above. These are the kind of photography items that you have to spend a lot on to get the best on the market but hope you never have to use, a bit like a good fire extinguisher! The quality and construction of VisibleDust kit is pretty good, but they really shine whilst in use, they are both simple and efficient to use. A great product and a higly recommended.

Seahouse and Farne Islands

  Well the 5th of June came and went and what a fab workshop! We had a great team of people and some stunning weather!     

     This month the Jason Friend workshop travelled to the little town of Seahouses, just down from Bamburgh Castle, on the North East Coast of England. Once the team had met up we were straight off down to the harbour to start shooting some of the great items that can be found all along a working fishing port. Here the guys and gals learned a little learned a little bit about composition, lead-in-lines and DOF.

Seahouse and Farne Islands

     Once the guys didn’t think they could shoot anymore angles of lobster pots we wisked them straight down to the small beach area where they learned how to use the larger telephoto lenses they had brought with them. After a few hints and tips everyone was off practicing shooting again, the subjects this time just happened to be a very obliging local family of ducks! 

     After a quick bite to eat and WC stop we hopped on a boat and headed out to the National Trusts beautiful Farne Islands. The sun was beating down and the water was as smooth as glass as we headed out of the harbour. We were treated to a tour of all the islands and the captain took us in close to the towering cliff walls of Staple Island to get a good look at all the different colonies of birds nesting in these islands. The sea is a lot rougher inbetween these ‘Pinnacles’ of rocks and we were all glad when we headed back out to sea. From here we headed off to Seal Island to see all the Seals who were basking in the hot sun. These guys are big! It was great to see them playing around the boat and bobbing up and down in the water, I think they were just as interested in us as much as we were in them! 

Seahouse and Farne Islands

     For the final leg of our trip we docked at Inner Farne island, showed our National Trust passes and head off to see the Puffins. Once again it was out with the cameras and off to shoot any of the 100,000 pairs of nesting birds. It was good to see everyone practicing what they had learned durning the mornings session as they dashed off to get their shots! 

Seahouse and Farne Islands

      I’m happy to say that everyone came away with some good looking shots and we all had a great day, even if one of us did get attacked by a couple of birds! Next time I must remember to take an umbrella!

     The next Jason Friend Workshop will be held on the North Tyneside Coast on the 18th July and places are going quickly! On this trip out we’ll be taking in the beautiful and very iconic St.Marys Lighthouse and then after lunch we’ll travel a little way down the coast to the Tynemouth Prioy and Castle. Hope to see you there.

Adobe Lightroom 3

     Well after some heavy testing on the Offical Adobe Beta program and more than 600,000 downloads on the public beta program I’m glad to say that Lightroom 3 is finally out on the streets and what a great update it is too!  Here are just a few of the great new features added and theres loads more!

All new noise reduction
Lens correction
DSLR video file intergration
Image Watermarking
Teathered shooting
Perspective correction
Film grian simulation

     Being on the Adobe Beta Team is a real honour as its both great to see the guys working hard to add all these new features going in, but also hard not to be able to tell everyone of all the fantastic work going on! You can get more info at the Adobe Lightroom website and you can get straight up to speed with version 3, with Martin Evening’s new book!

Lightroom 3 by Martin Evening

     A little bit of history behind the magazine:

     “Founded in 1999, the magazine has quickly built a reputation for high quality illustration, strong editorial and stylish design. The editorial team have taken the best of the country and mixed it with the vibrant city life.

     From humble beginnings, producing a 112-page magazine published three times a year, Living North now publishes monthly with an average of 350 pages, celebrating much of what is excellent about the North of England, from its glorious coastline, small niche businesses, heritage, food and numerous other attractions, from boutiques to bistros and much more besides. As such, the magazine is one of the most significant quality media outlets in the North East of England.”

Natures Best Photography

     Just a quick update to say that my photo, which I talked about here, has been moved to the front page slideshow on the Natures Best Website! As of writting this I’m currently about 8 slides in or if you wish you can hover over the bottom of the window and the thumbnails will appear, you can go straight to my photo from there! Way Cool!!

Apple iPad

     I’ve been thinking about purchasing an iPad since they had been announced by Apple to use as a backup system and a basic photo viewer for myself whilst out and about.  I think, and this is only my personnal view, that this piece of hardware was just built for this job, probably many others too, but from a photographers perspective this is why it was created! I’ve seen on the forums the arguments that the iPad has created, its a 50/50 split, those who think its a great bit of kit and those who think its pointless. Its like Mac vs PC all over again!

     The limits of the iPad are only set by the imagination of the people writing the Apps for it, we’ve seen this with the great ideas that have been created for the iPhone. The big question for photographers is ” will there be a version of Lightroom and Aperture” for the iPad? Its like Mac vs PC all over again! Personnally I think its already set in stone, its just a matter of time and a little bit of money! Apple have already added some support for Aperture in the 3.02 update:

“Enables support for importing photos from iPad to the Aperture Library, as well as syncing of photos to iPad.”

     This is a great first step. From here you can see them adding a small App which will allow you to add all the relavent meta and copyright  data to your shots whilst out in the field, you’ll probably even be able to choose you favs ready for processing when you get back home.  Adobe are going to have to work hard to try and catch up!

      What happens if you want to try and edit your photos whilst on you travels? Well theres a few iPhone Apps that are out there, Photoshop for one. But the best I have seen, specifically for the iPad, is called FilterStorm and is currently still in its early stages of developement but is already looking like a great little product!

     Now although FilterStorm only works with the embedded JPG from the RAW this App seems to have a pretty good range of workflow tools consisting of curves manipulation, color correction abilities, noise reduction, unsharp masking, black and white conversion and has a full history undo. Layers and a ND Grad are coming in future releases!

FilterStorm

FilterStorm

     Being in the UK we still can’t purchase the iPad as yet as the release date was pushed back to the 28th May due to the huge supply demands of the US. 1,000,000 iPads sold in 28 in the US alone! Needless to say that I will be downloading this App, whilst its still free, and will give it a full test when I have my iPad! Thats right, you guessed it, I’ve bought an iPad and i’m just awaiting delivery.

By Jason Friend

Scottish Highlands, Loch Lochy. Jason Friend

 These are the kind words of good mate and great photographer, Jason Friend. Jason is an award winning freelance photographer and writer based in the North East of England, when hes not traveling all over the world that is, and for the last 3 years has been passing on some his vast experience and knowledge via locally based workshops. These workshops are set up and aimed mainly at the beginner to intermediate photographer and based around teaching people to use their cameras, tripods, accessories.

Allen Banks & Staward Gorge

     Jason was kind enough to ask me, around a year and a half ago, if I would like to help out teaching on his workshops! This was an offer that I couldn’t refuse and would love to do, so I jumped at the chance. Theres just something heart warming about passing on the knowledge you have gained to those just starting out in the creative field of photography. Its amazing to see the huge amount of progress that some of the attendees can achieve in just one day! For some, the info hits home pretty quickly and for others it might take a few more hours, but everyone leaves for home pleased in the knowledge that they have learned a new skill set that they can put to good use in their own time over the coming months. For some people this one day workshop is enough and they are happy just knowing how to use their camera, others like to return 2-3 times a year and enjoy learning something new each time, some just like to have confirmation that what they currently are doing is correct and others just like coming out shooting with a great set of people in some of the finest places Northumberland and the North East coast have to offer!

Pinnacles Desert, Western Australia. Jason Friend.

     The Farne Islands and Seahouses, the North Tyneside coast, Rothbury, Dunstanburgh and Northumberland coast, Newcastle quayside, the South Tyneside coast, Hadrians Wall and the Cheviot Hills are just a few of the stunning locations selected to offer a wide range of different shooting styles to accomadate most attendees.

     The weather on these workshops, as is the neature of this beast, is always unpredictable! We’ve had overcast days, snow and days were it has been so hot that you would think you were in the South of France! This is all part and parcel of being a Landscape Photographer. These dramatic changes in weather are what we are all waiting for as this is one of the best times to capture some of the most stunning skys you can only imagine. This is a lesson taught from mother nature herself, the rest Jason can help with, taking you from snapshots to shooting landscapes in one enjoyable day.

You can vist Jason’s website ‘here‘ and view the upcoming workshops ‘here.‘

     I’ve tried big bags, I’ve tried small bags, I’ve tried half and half bags and all of them have had something I didn’t like about them. I was on the search for something that didn’t exist and to add to all of this I needed a bag which could house all my 6×4″ landscape filters, my lenses fitted with the LEE wide angle adaptors and lens caps and possibly carry my Gitzo tripod.  

     After surfing the net for what seemed like weeks and filling my mind with hundreds of different kinds of bags, styles, manufacturers and reviews I finally narrowed it down to a couple. The two bags I had on my list were:  

     Kata 3n1 30 (or 33 which has a laptop compartment):  

Kata 3n1 30

     And the Lowepro Fastpack 350:  

Lowepro Fastpack 350

     Now one of the bags I’d just sold as a Lowepro Fastpack 200 which was a great little bag and I was really sorry to see it go, so I had high hopes for the Fastpack 350! The 350 is also at a great price which would allow the rest of my funds to be spent other toys, sorry ‘equipment’, and it had a top compartment to hold food or waterproofs. This bag also came with a laptop compartment as standard.  

     The Kata is also similar in design, which is the style I prefer, but I liked the fact that the top compartment was a lot smaller which should allow for more camera equipment, which is always a plus! I also like the boxy design, the fact that the straps could be hidden away for travel purposes (for example carry-on on airplanes) and it could carry a tripod.  

     So, off I headed to the shops to have a scout around to see what was available locally and the prices that I might be looking at. I also wanted to see how these bags felt whilst wearing them and how much space was really inside. To help with this I took along my camera, gripped Canon 40D, and LEE 10 filter pouch for testing.  

LEE 10 Filter Pouch

     First up for the testing was the Lowepro Fastpack 350 and to be honest my first impression on seeing it was that it didn’t look any bigger than the Fastpack 200 I’d just sold! Upon closer inspection of the bag everything seemed a little bit bigger, but not by a huge amount. There was plenty of room in the laptop compartment and more than enough room in the top area, but the most important part lacked any real space when compared to its smaller brother. The easy replacement I was hoping to walk in and pick up had just gone out the window, so whilst already in the Lowepro section I thought I’d take a look at what else they had to offer. To be honest all of the bags seemed to have to have a feature or item that could set them apart. The Slingshot. The Apex. The Flipside. Even the Trekker seemed to have masses of tassels, straps and clips all over it. I was just after something simple.  

     Next on the list was the much talked about Kata 3n1 30/33.  The only difference between the two is the fact that the 33 has the laptop compartment built into the back. This isn’t always top of my list of “must haves” when buying a bag, but if it’s there then I’ll use it. Sometimes it’ll have a laptop in it, sometimes it’ll have some waterproofs in and on other occasions it’ll just have a magazine in. On first inspection the Kata looked like a great bag, clearly a better build quality than the Lowepro and to my eye a cleaner and more compact design. Having said that it was nearly twice the price! I liked the fact it had a carry handle on the front top and not on the back were it can sometimes rub on your neck. I also liked the fact that you could hide away all the straps and shoulder harnesses if you were using it as carry-on luggage! These thoughtful people had also given you the ability to have change how the harnesses worked, you could have it as a backpack or a slingback from either shoulder. It also even came with a tummy strap, should you be going on extra long walks. 

     Next up was the top compartment, this time it was a lot smaller than the Lowepro at around about a 1/3rd of the size of the bag, which leaves 2/3rds for the all important camera equipment. It was just about the right size to hold a load of the smaller items I would probably carry and possibly either a packed lunch or a small waterproof. 

     The main camera area had quite a bit of room for the larger sizes of pro camera equipment and lenses. For example you could squeeze in a gripped camera with a 70-200 2.8, a 24-70 2.8, a 16-35 2.8 and a 580 EXII which is great, but the way the bag opened meant that you couldn’t get to the top 1/3rd of the camera compartment without stripping the whole bag down. This area look as if it had been designed to house a flash or smaller non pro zoom lens which then could slide in and out when you open up the bag to quickly get your camera out. By the time I had put my camera and a second lens in the bag the only usable room that would have been left to store my filter pouch would be this small area which you couldn’t really get to and since I us my filters all the time this wasn’t going to work for me! 

     Now, this was the only downside to the bag, but I like to be able to access all of my equipment pretty quickly. I could have possibly moved around all the inserts to find a solution to the problem, but I just didn’t feel comfortable  with this and knew I would end up on the look out for another bag before long, so I started to look around the shop for something else. I did keep going back to the Kata and thinking that I could make it work, but in the end decided to go for something else. 

     That something else was a Think Tank Photo Streetwalker HardDrive Backpack it’s a bit of a mouth full, but its a hell of a bag! This thing just has masses and masses of room and is really deep too, but from the outside it just looks like a normal boring, boxy, plain backpack. Ideal!

Think Tank Streetwalker HardDrive(Exterior)

     The quality of this bag is fantastic and I didn’t think the quality could get any better after looking at the Kata. Everything would appear to be double stitched, the carry handle on the top has been move out of the way so it doesn’t rub on you neck, the small zips have toggles on of easy opening and closing, the main zippers are just massive and so easy to use. It has two areas to mount large and small tripods!

Think Tank Streetwalker HardDrive(Tripod)

     The tummy harness can be folded away for when using as a carry-on bag and all the tassels and straps have elastic loops built-in so you can fold away the excess so they don’t get in your way. Theres two zipper pockets on either side of the back and on top of those are two elastic pockets for drinks bottles or anything else you might need on a regular basis. Theres even a business card or luggage tag window on the top of the bag! It would appear that everything has been thought about on the exterior and the same goes for the interior too.

Think Tank Streetwalker HardDrive(Interior)

     The first thing you notice is the fact that the bag opens right up, there is no little bit of a lip where the zippers end, this bag opens up to its extents! Next thing you notice is how deep this baby is. The Canon 24-70 2.8L is a big lens to stand on its end and usually has to be layed down, but this bag just swallows it up along with the large Lee filter pouch, I always thought that the pouch would be a tight fit in any bag but not here! Those smart people over at Think Tank have even come up with a clever little shelf inside the bag to hook your camera grip onto to stop it having any chance of falling out! The only thing this bag doesn’t have is a separate area, like the other two bags talked about above, to store your packed lunch or some waterproofs. Think Tank have been thoughtful enough to provided more than enough dividers and I quickly realised that I could separate off a small area on the bottom of the bag, with said dividers, to house these items when needed.

     Am I please with my new bag? Does it do everything I want it to do? Did I make the right choice with this purchase? Was this bag worth the extra money over the other bags?

     I think only time will tell with all of the above questions. I think as you grow as a photographer so do your needs and choices in equipment and bags and for the moment I’m more than happy with the choices I’ve made.

     At the time of my birthday LEE Filters had just announced, at the Focus-On-Imaging show, their new 10stop glass ND filter. Now I’d been looking for and thinking about a 10stop filter for quite some time, specifically the B&W screw-in. The main reason I hadn’t taken the plunge and picked a B&W up is that I currently use the LEE filter holder system and frankly using screw-in filters with this system is just a real pain in the behind. Now I like the LEE holder, its simple, quick and easy to use, but adding a screw-in before this and it just isn’t enjoyable due to the fact that you can’t access the screw-in filter because of the adaptor ring . So I was more than pleased when I saw the announcement about the slot in filter and even had a chuckle over the name: The LEE BIG Stopper!

Shot using the new LEE 10 Stop ND filter

      I’ve now been the proud owner of a BIG Stopper for around a month and boy these babys have turned out to be like gold dust, nobody has any stock and I wish I’d bought a handful! I’ve also been playing around with this filter for about the same amount of time learning when, where and how to use it.

     Setup: Setup is easy, just how I like it! Compose shot, add grads as you would do normally, but remember to leave the slot closest to the camera free for the BIG Stopper. Set exposure. Add the 10stop filter and work out the new exposure by adding ten stops or you can use the handy little chart LEE supplied to work it out or if you’re like me you can just guess! 

     Results: The first thing you notice on the back of the camera are that the photos have a blue cast to them and not the usual magenta. Magenta casts are always difficult to remove even in RAW and they affect different cameras by different amounts. LEE knew this and added a blue cast to the filter, which is not only a lot more natural, but is also a lot easier to remove in RAW due to the fact that as you are removing the cold tones(blue) you begin to add more warm tones(yellow). This doesn’t work so well when you have a magenta cast because whilst removing the magenta you are adding green into the photo, not good! See image below, taken from Adobe Camera RAW:

White-Balance in Camera RAW by Adobe

      Experience: You just can’t buy this, I’ve tried, you just have to work hard and earn it!  I think with this filter due to the long exposure times experience is going to be key, but then again you could say that about photography in general! But most other times when taking photos you don’t have to wait 1min, 4mis, 8mins, 16mins to see if you have the exposure correct, you could have shot a handful of frames and moved on. With times this long if you don’t get it right the first time you might have just missed that sweet spot of light that you were looking at and wished to capture, you might not have time to get another shot! Other things to consider are the ever changing weather conditions, when you start the exposure your timings might be right on the money, but if the light changes and you get cloud cover or the sun comes out then you’ll have to make a decision if you wish to cut short or extend your exposure.

     In the photo of Dunstanburgh Castle above one of the things I never thought about was the very light sea fret (fog) that had been rolling in and out all day. This couldn’t be seen in the photos with normal exposure times and didn’t effect the photo in any way, but with the long exposure you can notice that the castle has a slight mist over it and isn’t as sharp as it should be. Does it add to the photo? I like it!

     As I learn more and more I think I’ll keep coming back to this subject, but in the end I think there is going to be a lot of trial and error and a funny learning curve, but as with all things photographic its always enjoyable.