“Rip it Up”

A friend of mine suggested that I might re-visit some of my old works to help chase away my lockdown blues. This shot, taken in 2004 enlarged and re-edit using my much more modern software.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49997949326/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

“Tempus fugit”, 120 frame timelapse. :)

June 12, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

More experimentation today.

Okay, here’s something I don’t understand. I set it up to take a frame every minute up to a total of 120 frames (two hours in real time). So you’d think that the second hand would always be in the same place in every frame but, as you can see, it moves!. Great that it does but I don’t understand how, oh well it won’t stop me sleeping tonight 🙂 .

Kind regards

Leigh

Experimentation

June 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Focus Stacking, HDR, Leigh Kemp, photography | 2 Comments

Hi and thanks to Sherry Felix,

I’ve been experimenting with some new ideas. First off I’ve been learning about electronic shutter. I never really gave it much thought but I shoot a lot of HDR and that typically mean 3-5 shutter activations per image so it got me thinking and I’ve programmed a setting (Myset) to enable exposure bracketing and, here’s the important bit, enable High Speed Silent Shutter (11 FPS) which uses electronic shutter rather than high speed mechanical shutter. That way I can shoot as many frames as I like and not wear out the mechanical shutter any more than it already is. It has it’s limitations if one shoots high ISO, very fast action and/or in indoor lighting but, in both my landscape and macro work it looks as if it’ll work well. And it has the added bonus of being silent.

The trick I normally use to decide if, when and how much bracketing to use is to keep an eye on the camera’s on-screen shadow and highlight display which shows shadow areas and blow out highlights and rotate the the manual exposure compensation dial either way to work out how many stops of over and under exposure are required to restore detail in the highlights and/or shadows, remembering to reset it before shooting.

The other thing I’ve been playing around with is using my 10 inch tablet for chroma key green (Hex #00ff00) and chroma key blue (Hex #0000ff) and other “funky” backdrops. A couple of quick test images:

Watch and bubble from greenscreen finished - Copy Watch and bubbles finished 2 - Copy

Thanks Sherry, you’re helping me to stay sane. 🙂

Best wishes,

Leigh

I’ll be back

June 10, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi folks,

I’m taking an indefinite break from my photography. I don’t think that my work is going anywhere at the moment. The macro stuff has been fun but I’m much more interested in my landscape work, without transport and with everything still locked down it’s more than frustrating. Maybe when things change I’ll be able to get out again and do what I love doing but for the time being I’m going to put my photography and artwork on hold.

I'll be back

Kind regards

Leigh

“Natural habitat”

June 10, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography | 2 Comments

Hi folks,

More green screen macro fun. Two painted carved wooden owls in the woods.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49990882168/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

I wish that I’d had one of these before!

June 8, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

I’ve been looking for one of these LCD hoods for a while. The problem is that all the one’s I’ve found require sticking parts to the camera, something that I didn’t want to do. Enter the Movo LH30 Deluxe LCD Hood Shade for Flip-Out DSLR Camera and Camcorder LCD’s (for 3″ Screens). , catchy name huh?!. It’s cheap and cheerful and it does the job, it’s not made well enough to last a lifetime and it perfectly fits my OM-D E-M5 Mk II articulated screen. I think that they are also available for 2.75, 3.25 and 3.5 inch screens under the MOVO and NEEWER brand names.

I don’t usually use the LCD screen very much out and about even though they have their uses, partly because I’m so used to using viewfinders for all these years, partly to conserve battery consumption and partly because in strong sunlight and in hot countries etc., they’re absolutely flipping useless, you can’t see a darned thing. This lightweight unobtrusive little bit of kit works like a charm. Always nice when one finds something that one’s been looking for for ages and it works as expected. 🙂

Does what it says on the tin for blog

Best wishes.

Leigh

“Whirlygig”

June 8, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, River, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I never get tired of photographing this wildly eccentric houseboat on the River Thames at Kingston Upon Thames. every time I revisit there’s something new to see. Note the addition of a face mask to the White Rabbit, nice touch.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49984548987/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

As I sit here looking at my modern digital cameras I’m reminded of my first camera and, in particular, the first photograph that I ever took. Nowadays we take cameras and camera technology pretty much for granted but when I was a child I can’t remember many photographs. The only time our camera saw the light of day, and it had to be the light of day, as there wasn’t a flash, was on a few family occasions, the usual thing, school sports days, birthdays, etc.. My interest in photography didn’t start until my grandfather “loaned” me his camera to take with me on a week-long school trip, sleeping under canvas, in Snowdonia, North Wales. It was a somewhat battered old twin-lens reflex camera in which one looked downwards in to the viewfinder when taking a photograph.

I remember being very excited at being entrusted with the family camera, film wasn’t cheap and I had very little to no idea how to use it. The experience must have made some kind of impression on me as, after all these years, I still remember taking my first photograph. The coach stopped en-route at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill and it became the subject of my first photograph. Although, sadly, like my other photographs from the trip, it has long since disappeared, however, I really don’t need the photograph to remind me as the experience is indelibly etched on my mind. I wonder if this is perhaps where my interest in landscape photography stems from but that’s probably too much of an assumption. As far as I remember I was the only kid on the trip to have a camera, that’s how different things were, nowadays, just about everyone has a camera of some sort built in to their mobile phones. It also taught me to be disciplined to the point of being frugal when taking photographs as the trip was for one week and I only had a 12 exposure black and white film in the camera.

Some years later I really got the photography bug and bought my first camera, an Olympus OM-1 35 mm film camera and I went on to own their OM-2 and OM-4ti cameras and a range of lenses. Film was still pretty expensive considering I earned about £20 a week in my first job so I got in to developing and printing my own black and white and, later, colour films to help keep the costs down and make things more affordable. Not only did this experience teach me an awful lot about image-making start to finish, many of the techniques and skills that I learned in my makeshift darkroom, a small room adorned with genuine World War 2 blackout curtains fitted to keep out the light, another hand-me-down from my grandfather, these skills would re-surface and be invaluable some years later when I started working on processing my digital images.

I put myself through University as a mature student and I badly needed the money so I had to very reluctantly part with all my photographic equipment, but needs must. After I graduated I bought my first digital camera, a small fixed lens Kodak compact camera, reduced in a sale. It had, by today’s standards, a laughably small maximum image resolution of 640×480 pixels or, to put it another way, a stunning 0.4 Megapixels!. For all of this and further equipped with screw on wide angle and telephoto lens attachments, it proved to be a fabulous little camera which I took all over the place with me. Put simply, digital photography was a revelation, to me, no requirement for film, no real running costs and a lot of image capacity on a small memory card which I found absolutely liberating.

A few years before that I had discovered some free graphics editing software on the cover disk of a computer magazine and that started off my real passion for working with graphics and, ultimately, photo processing. So I then had all the tools I required to develop, pun intended and further, my interest in digital photography. Processing is where the magic starts for me, I am totally absorbed in and fascinated by the range of options that digital processing affords me. It encourages me, if, that is, I ever need encouragement, to constantly experiment with new styles, new techniques and is such an important part of my enjoyment and interest in photography.

I went on to own several DSLRs but, as I got older I began to find that they were simply too heavy and bulky. I switched over back in 2013 to Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. My choice of MFT system was heavily influenced by my experiences with my Olympus film cameras, maybe it was, in truth, part based on nostalgia that I decided on their OM-D system. As a landscape/travel photographer I have to carry my gear around all day and the weight and bulk saving is highly significant. I’ve been very impressed with the image quality of my Micro Four Thirds equipment, it has traveled with me extensively, never let me down and I have never had cause to question my decision to go over to that format.

So my 50-plus year photographic adventure has led me from twin-lens reflex and single-lens reflex film cameras to digital cameras, from stumbling around in a dimly-lit darkroom to working with my images on my computer. I’ve heard it said on occasions, including a comment I read some while back by a very famous photographer, that cameras being so much an every-day item now and available in mobile phones etc. devalues photography. I feel quite the opposite, I firmly believe that it empowers everyone with affordable technology to take photographs and enjoy photography and that, in my opinion, is fantastic. Although I’ve very much enjoyed my personal photographic journey I do confess to feeling a slight tinge of regret that the technology wasn’t available when I started out but one can’t put the clock back and I intend to keep on embracing all these great technological advancements, experimenting and enjoying my work.

Cameras:

Olympus: OM-D E-M5 Mk II (titanium) & HLD-8G grip, OM-D E-M1 Mk I (black) & HDL-7 grip, OM-D EM-5 Mk I (silver) & HDL-6 grip, PEN EPL-5, PEN EP-5 (silver) +VF-4, PEN E-PL8 (Silver) +VF4, Tough TG-5 (red), PEN-F (silver), Canon Powershot G10, Nikon Coolpix A100

Lenses:

Olympus: M.Zuiko: 12 mm f/2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25 mm f/1.8, 45 mm f/1.8, 30 mm f/3.5 macro, 9 mm f/8 body cap fisheye, 15 mm f/8 body cap, 9-18 mm, 12-50 mm, 12-40 mm f/2.8 PRO, 14-150 mm II, 40-150 mm II, 12-45mm f/4 PRO, MCON-P02.

Sigma: ART 60 mm f/2.8.

Samyang: Manual focus 7.5 mm f/3.5 fisheye.

TT Artisan: Manual focus 17mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4.

Panasonic Lumix: 14 mm f/2.5, 20 mm f/1.7, 12-32 mm x2 (black and silver), 12-60 mm, 14-42 mm II, 35-100 mm, 45-150mm.

PEN E-P5, 9-18mm,12-32mm, 40-150mm II. A lightweight kit with virtually continuous coverage from 18mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto.

OM-D E-M1 I, 14-150mm II, 12-40mm PRO. . Heavier than my other kits but with complete weather-sealing. Coverage from 24mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto with some overlap for backup.

OM-D E-M5 II, 17mm, 35mm, 12-60mm. A balance of two fun manual focus lenses with a weather-sealed body and zoom lens.

PEN E-PL5, 9mm, 15mm, 25mm, 60mm, 12-50mm. Another lightweight fun kit with a zoom option.

TG-5, OM-D E-M5 mk1, 7.5mm, 12mm, 17mm, 45mm, 30mm macro. M-CON.

PEN-F, 14mm, 20mm, 12-32mm, 35-100mm. Probably my favourite lightweight day-to-day kit. Two fast primes and two zoom with almost continuous coverage from 24mm wide angle through to 200mm telephoto.

Software:

Corel: Paintshop Pro Elite 2020 & Video Studio 2019.

Skylum Software: Aurora HDR 2019, Luminar 4, Luminar AI and Luminar Neo.

DXO Labs: PhotoLab 5 Elite, Viewpoint 3, NIK Collection 6, Film Pack 5 and PureRAW.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

Topaz Labs: Studio 2, Sharpen AI, A.I Gigapixel, AI Clear, AI Adjust, DeNoise AI and Various legacy plugins.

Adobe: Lightroom.

GreenScreenWizard Studio Pro.

Serif: Affinity Photo

Microsoft: Image Composite Editor (Free).

Darktable (Free).

Olympus: Olympus Capture, Olympus Workspace and Olympus Webcam (Free to Olympus owners).

Sony: Movie Studio Platinum.

Lighting Gear:

Godox TT350o flash, Godox X1T radio flash trigger, Godox Lux Junior flash, LED ring flash, GVM RGB LED light, Olympus MAL-1 Macro Arm Light. Two Godox LED36 lights, Godox Litemons LED6R light. Three Bowen studio flash heads, barndoors, honeycombes, umbrellas and flash meter.