Adelle the Geek

Smeaton's Tower

One more Emma shot!

Emma - half body shot

I love the colours and the light of the late-evening sun!

Sleeping and the abandoned shoe

 

 

Emma at the riverside

Emma posing on a wall

I was hoping to get a little late evening sunlight for the shoot tonight and I was lucky to enjoy a few breaks in the clouds!

The lovely Emma is posing on a wall with the sunlight behind me. I added a small amount of fill flash to lighten the shadows. I used the 85mm f/1.2 wide open to get a thin dof, focussing it on a tripod with live view.

I liked the lighting in the scene and how the background melts away.

Grandfather's Balls & vertical correction

There is a family connection with my wife's relations here! Great Grandfather Gribble on Nan's side of the family cast the cannon balls on the Drake Memorial. They have always been known as 'Grandfather's balls'.

I also had another go at yesterday's shot, correcting the verticals using LR5.

Plymouth Hoe

Well - this is my first play with the Lee filter's 'Big Stopper' - I also added a hard grad to balance the sky. Ideally I could have done with a longer exposure to blur the water more, but I think the shot works.

Straight out of camera it was rather blue, so I used Nik's Colour Efex to keep the top blue while neutralising the bottom.

Daisies

This might be over-saturated as I'm working on a laptop but....

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, f/2 @85 mm, ISO 100

Slack rope walking....

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, f/1.2 @85 mm, 1/1250, ISO 100, Flash

The hands and the Voigtlander 40mm f/2 SL-II

Thanks to Bob Latham for lending me the Voigtlander 40mm f/2 SL-II Ultron lens!

 

The lens is a fascinating and beautifully made manual focus lens. As you can see from this shot it is sharp wide open and bests (to my eyes) Canon's f/2.8 40mm pancake which itself is a decent lens.

 

 

Not sure what I think about the bokeh (out of focus areas) yet, but I'll continue to play!

 

 

The shot was taken handheld using zoomed live view and processed in Color Efex Pro.

 

The bells

Processed in Nik Efex using the pinhole preset.

Waiting

The long walk

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, f/1.2 @85 mm, 1/160, ISO 800, No Flash

Reading on the window seat

I really liked this candid - I love the natural light and felt a mono conversion worked well.

Mum at Canons Ashby

I took this using the 700D and the superb Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro Planar - I love the shallow depth of field you can achieve and the way the picture transitions from in to out of focus. I used a dash of fill from a 580EXII on camera.

The 700D was on a monopod to help keep it steady. I recently traded my Eos-M for the 700D - mostly because the combination of an articulated touch screen and a DSLR is great for macro work and using manual focus lenses.

The Globe in the Library

Adelle with off-camera flash

I was annoyed that I didn't have any flash modifiers or stands with me for this shoot, but here I simply laid the flash on the grass to avoid totally flat light. A softbox would have been better though.

Canon 5D Mark III first impressions and Taunton Centre

Unfortunately my 5D Mark II suffered a fall onto a hard surface, but insurance came to the rescue and provided me with a 5D Mark III.

I really like the camera on first impressions. It feels very rugged and nice & chunky in my large hands. The LCD screen is excellent and zooming in to the subject gives you confidence you've hit focus when review shots. The layout of the menus is better (clearer) than any previous Canon SLR I've used and aside from a few minor changes to button layout I'm already feeling at home.

I thought I'd try the in-camera HDR for this shot. Interestingly it still saves the three seperate Raw files so I could process them again if I wished.

Canon 5D Mark III, 85L @ f/1.2, ISO 1000

(Common?) Blue Butterfly

Yellow Ladybug

Sikh Gentleman