“Getting closer to nature”

Managed to get out for a few hours this morning wandering around Hotham Park not far from where we live. Decided to take my E-M1 and M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 lens with me for a change. Love this time of year. 🙂 As I though it might, the Manfrotto Pixi EVO 2 tripod and Ulanzi Claw quick release combo makes for an excellent chest pod, not that I needed it as such but I was keen to try it out in this role. As usual this is from a five-frame handheld HDR. I also used my 1/4 strength K&F Concept black mist diffusion filter.

All the best,

Leigh

K&F Concepts black mist diffusion filters.

November 17, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Although mainly purchased for my landscape work I did want to try out my 1/8 and 1/4 strength K&F Concept black mist diffusion filters at the wedding. On balance I think that I prefer the 1/4 strength as the effect is that bit more pronounced. I was there as a guest and not in any official capacity, I don’t do weddings and, relatively rarely, people shots except of family. This one taken with the 1/4 strength filter. I Really like the lighting effects. Olympus OM-D E-M1 mk 1 and M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8. One thing that I do like about their filters is the grippy knurled pattern around the edges which makes screwing them on and off than much easier. They also have a thin “nano” form factor which doesn’t cause them to vignette on my wide angle lenses. Another thing, at least in these filters, is that they don’t have any discernible colour cast. To date these are working well for me as I generally prefer a degree of warmth and softness/diffusion in my images. I’ve been doing this for years in post processing but sometimes it’s artistically interesting to see the effects whilst composing the shot. I can always take a shot with and without the filter and see which I like best later.

Kind regards

Leigh

Ulanzi Claw quick release – Love at first click.

November 16, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I decided to get one of these Ulanzi Claw quick release plates. Wow!!!, these are so quick and easy to attach and detach the camera. Unlike the Arca Swiss type plates there’s no locking screw to have to tighten/untighten. I used to like the Manfrotto ones for their sturdiness, quality and security but these Ulanzi ones are really great. To quickly try it out I put it on my new Manfrotto Pixi Evo 2 tripod, as you can see below it adds very little bulk to it. To attach the camera you just position it in any of four positions (0,90,180 or 270 degrees) press it down and it clicks into place, the claimed weight handling of 50Kg!, reassuring as it is, is far in excess of my tripod and anything that I might ever want to attach to it. With my leg and neck pain problems and other aliments I certainly wouldn’t be carrying anything weighing 50Kg very far!, I’m too old and unfit to be a Royal Marines Commando. 🙂 . To release it one simply simultaneously presses on the two side red and black coloured “buttons” and that’s it. The red button has a lock position and the whole thing feels really secure and weighs only 59g or approx. 2 ounces. Be aware that they also do a mark II version which, along with the tripod bush is also Arca Swiss compatible so one has the best of both worlds. If I’d have realised I’d have bought that version for its extra versatility but it’s not in any way a show-stopper.

At circa £26 UK the Ulanzi Claw isn’t the cheapest release plate around but I think that one gets what one pays for, would you trust your expensive camera and lens to a cheap and cheerful plate?, I know I wouldn’t and it’s really nicely designed and made of aluminium. I don’t go overboard on packaging but it is attractive and screams quality. I’m so impressed that I ordered one of their U-100 ball heads with claw fitting which also has the added bonus of a cold shoe mount from their website whilst they have their Black Friday deals principally to go on my Manfrotto lightweight monopod or possibly my original Pixi mini tripod. I’ll also have an extra camera plate to attach to another of my cameras. Over time I can see myself standardising on this system as and when funds permit, it’s just so quick and simple. Apart from the extremely serious personal consideration of weight, part of my dislike of camera supports is the time they take to constantly setup and collapse which doesn’t live happily with my shooting style so anything that simplifies and speeds up this process has my vote. So, like them or not, until some ingenious designer designs the ultra-lightweight, ultra-compact, automatic-assembly/disassembly “Transformers Hover Pod”, I’m stuck with conventional camera supports but this does make life one little bit easier which is most appreciated. 🙂

Some pics:

Kind regards

Leigh

Another street shot of the Old Town Marbella.

November 16, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Kind regards

Leigh

They’re ducks Jim but not as we know them.

November 14, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

What is this all about!?. Surprisingly no customers and not even a shop assistant in sight. but I suppose that if you wanted a model duck then this would be as good a place as any to go. I didn’t realise that ducks were so popular in Marbella, one lives as one learns. I can only guess that folks collect them, it is however just about the only time this year that I’ve managed to get all my ducks in a row. 🙂 If any of my friends are into duck collecting then I’d like it to be known that I think that it’s a wonderful hobby, I simply won’t have a word said against it, as Grouch Marx said “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others”. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

Pixis at the end of my garden! :)

November 14, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in photography and tagged camera, landscape-photography, Photography, Travel, tripod | Leave a comment

Great title huh! 🙂 , I was going to take a picture outside but the light’s pretty poor at this time of day so you get this one instead.

Hi everyone,

For some years now I’ve occasionally used my Manfrotto Pixi table top tripod. This little tripod has come in handy a few times. It’s small, light and pretty sturdy and best-suited for one of my smaller cameras and lenses but it has its limitations. The height cannot be adjusted and the ball head does not permit portrait orientation shots to be taken. I decided to get one of their Pixi Evo 2 tripods to address these issues. It is a bit bigger and heavier but still just small enough to slip into one of my camera bag compartments. Unlike it’s smaller sibling, the ball head is loosened and tightened by a three-sided knob rather than a hold in button. The head can be adjusted to facilitate portrait orientation shots and the legs can be adjusted individually to heighten the tripod with click stop positions, nice for uneven surfaces. There’s also a wheel with which to tighten the tripod thread unlike the Pixi which requires the whole tripod to be turned. Lastly there’s a small lever on the side which allows the legs to be adjusted to lay flat albeit significantly reducing the tripod height and having a much wider footprint. In that position, as one might expect, the tripod is extremely stable. The weight handling is claimed to be 2.5Kg which is comfortably more than enough for my cameras and all but my heaviest lenses. The tripod is heavy enough not to blow away with the slightest puff of wind. How it might hold up to the Winter winds straight from the sea on the Bognor Regis seafront is yet to be established 🙂 and it might also make a nice compact chest pod.

So all-in-all a worthwhile and, as these things go, relatively inexpensive upgrade which, who knows, just might encourage me a bit more to take a tripod with me on my travels. 🙂 I’d have liked to see a quick release mechanism incorporated similar to the Gorillapods but I can add one of mine but it would add extra weight and bulk, my bête noire, so for the times I foresee myself using it, I probably won’t bother at least to start with. I’m not a Vlogger but if I was and I was using the tripod as a hand grip/ selfie stick I’d probably still go with my smaller Pixi tripod as the Evo 2 is somewhat larger and heavier in one’s hand and thus grip-wise it doesn’t feel so secure unless one has somewhat larger hands than mine but because of it’s adjustable legs it does have more reach which, I guess, might be desirable.

Best wishes,

Leigh

Old town Marbella street shots

November 14, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

A few more of my shots of the Old Town Marbella all taken with my OM-D E-M1 I camera and M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8 lens.

Kind regards

Leigh

Wake up and smell the coffee

November 13, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography and tagged camera, cameras, Photography | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

Long term I don’t see a very rosy future for the camera manufacturers unless they wake up and smell the coffee. It seems that the only way that they can try and entice everyday folks into buying their gear is by incorporating more and more useless tech and pushing the illusion that these features will magically enable folks to take amazing photographs and/or video that their smart phones aren’t in any way capable of and, in order to do this for a shrinking market they’re making their gear un-realistically priced and un-affordable to many which is in total contradiction to selling their products and this, the size, bulk, complexity and weight of the gear isn’t going to temp that many mobile phone users into buying their gear. A camera is just that a one-use tool, one more thing to buy and carry around whereas mobile phones have many uses, they’re smaller, cheaper, easier to carry and affordable to upgrade. as well as being second-nature to operate for many, especially those of a certain generation.

The camera manufacturers need to seriously re-evaluate their strategies else they will sooner of later, probably sooner, find themselves producing ever more costly cameras for a dedicated niche market in a law of diminishing returns which can only have one outcome and those of us that enjoy using a camera will find ourselves sustained by the used camera market until we are confined to history . They’ve lost the plot, it’s not just all about how many megapixels or AI etc., it comes down to affordability, rational design and inspired marketing, look what David Bailey did for the Olympus Trip, I still have folks, old enough to remember, come up to me sometimes and say “who’d you think you are, David Bailey?” (wish I had his money) 🙂 that’s clever mainstream marketing, we don’t ever see any camera adverts on TV nowadays, nothing to raise awareness, tempt people and capture their imagination so what’s to make people aware of a thing called a camera? and why they might want to buy one. What little marketing one does see is largely aimed at photographers, we know what a camera is and what it’s for, preaching to the converted!, they’re repeatedly fishing in the same small pond. Is this a mixture of arrogance and complacency on the part of camera manufacturers? if so as the old saying goes “pride cometh before a fall”. Yoshihisa Maitan’s inspirational vision to empower people with affordable, lightweight, well-built cameras to take pictures has never seemed further away.

CC. OM Systems, Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony et. al.. 🙂

Here endeth the lesson for today 🙂 🙂

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.