Ice Angel again...!

During the latest cold snap unbelievably the Winter Ice Angel at the local caves returned!

Not quite as spectacular as in January but I think you'll agree pretty impressive all the same!

Here is an image that I took on the 3rd of December.



Like i said not quite as impressive but not bad, here is the image from January 2010.



With a bit of luck she'll be back again.

St Neot Cycle Ride

Well done everyone who rode the on Sunday 26th September from the London Inn in St Neot to Jamaica Inn. At the last count around £550 was raise for Jeans for Genes.

There are a few shots here...

http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/Image_Gallery/?openfolder=Events/Fun%20Ride/&openfile=IMG_0008.JPG

Digital SLR's Movies and bows and arrows.

I had the pleasure of shooting an archery event at the weekend. 'Moscovy Archers' my local club which i was a member for a number of years held a field archery event in the woods not far from were i live.

A great opertunity to use my camera i thought and maybe get to test out its video recording.

DSLR's video looks completely different to your average camcorder.
Camcorders have almost everything in focus all the time and tend to make the image look flat, a camcorder will always look like a video which there is nothing wrong with but it will never look classey, a Digital SLR on the other hand records an image which looks like a traditional 35mm film camera as used by film makers the world over.


There is a big shift at the minute for indi film makers to use DSLR's as the 'look' up until now has been reserved for big films with even bigger budgets! To get anything close in the motion picture camera range would cost you 20K plus!

Then along came a camera called a Canon 5D Mark II with its Full HD 1080p resolution and 24p (fps) frame rate. Digital video was transformed overnight and now they are everywhere, being used for low budget music video's to major TV productions like 'House' which the seanson finale was film exclusively on 5D Mark II's.

So whats all the fuss about?
To try and show the 'look' which you get i have included a 'still' which has been taken from a movie clip i took at the weekend. (I haven't finished putting the movie together yet)

As you can see the subject pop's out of the frame and looks as if it had been taken from a DVD/film. The camera has done such a good job of gathering light it almost looks as if some extra lighting or reflectors had been used but it was all natural light and as it was taken under the tree's there wasn't much of it.

On the technical note this clip was taken at 200mm with the camera set to ISO6400 which is a very high sensitivity and normally reserved as a last resort in dark conditions, however the 5D Mark II is incredibly good at producing detailed images in really very poor light and ISO6400 is really not a problem and even ISO12800 can produce very good prints.

At my next wedding, time permitting i will definately record a few clips.

You can see more images from this shoot by clicking here.

New Camera time!

It's that time again. A bit like buying a new car, which do you go for, the only blessing is camera's only come in black and the make is pretty much desided by your lenses! and you don't part exchange either the old one become another backup.

I had been debating on which body to go for for ages. Do I update my current camera with a Canon 7D, 18MP, great for fast shooting, crop sensor which means your lens act as if they are longer than they actually are (great for sport and wildlife) or do I go for a 5D Mark II, 21MP fullframe sensor and regarded as one of the best wedding camera on the market, fantastic low light image capabilities.

Ultimately it came down to image quality, photography for me is about producing the very best images i can, so for me there was only one real option.

So for 2010 the 5D Mark II it is. Am i please with it? Oh yes, the images it produces are superb and full of detail. Matched to my 24-105L lens it performs superbly, and my 85mm prime is just a dream.

Spring is in the air

At last the weather seems to be warmin up a little. We were outside at the weekend i heard the firmiliar call of one of our resident birds, the Green Woodpecker. I haven't heard him shreak for a while so it made me smile at the weekend.

This year i must try and get some proper photographs of some of the birds which visit our garden.

More Photoshop

Not all Photoshop edits are so subtle... in this recent example i was asked to create some custom images to replace the original HSE pictures for a set of hard hitting actual work place related posters, the theme, "Simple mistakes shatter lives..."


This image was created from 2 originals, the actor on the ground was actually standing in another picture. http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/hse_poster.jpg

This image was created from 4 originals. http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/hse_poster3.jpg

Photoshop has not only enabled me to cut out, move and rotate the actors it has also enabled me to add shadow so in the first he now looks as thow he was actually on the ground and the second the broken parts look as if the have rotated.

The only real limitation to the editing possibilities in Photoshop is your imagination.

Photo editing in Photoshop

I get asked all the time if I edit photo's with photoshop, the answer on some is yes, but photoshop can do more than just remove the odd skin blemish or take out things like litter.

When it comes to enhancing an image Photoshop is simply amazing... as a photographer it enables me to enhance an image to enable others to see as i do, it can also recover images and in some cases do both!
Sometimes modern camera's have difficulties exposing correctly for certain situaltions, in this example (a friend asked it i could recover this image that was taken by them whilst on holiday) below the original image is very underexposed (dark) due to the bright sky.

http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/photoshop_before.jpg

A little photoshop later and the image is trasformed. The second dog has been removed, the forground been darkened, the subject has been lightened, the sky has been enhanced, the image has been cropped to improve its framing and finally the image has been converted to black and white with extra grain added and contrast boosted.
http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/photoshop_after.jpg

5 minutes in photoshop.