“Across the Water” 2

I’m a long term fan of High Dynamic Range or HDR photography, I think that it’s one of the most exciting things to have happened in photography for some years. There’s a lot of stuff out there that one can read that say’s that one can’t shoot HDR handheld and that use of a tripod is obligatory. Well I have never subscribed to this as virtually all my shots taken over the last five or so years have been shot as HDR, handheld without a tripod in sight!.

What one needs to routinely reliably capture HDR images without using a tripod are three things.

A camera with excellent image stabilisation like my OM-D and PEN-F cameras. This is an absolute must have, a real game-changer. One must of course always keep as still as possible whilst taking the shots both to avoid camera shake at slow shutter speeds and to promote good image alignment.
Good HDR software like Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2019 with its great alignment and ghost reduction features. I very rarely have to set the ghost reduction to more than medium and typically to less.
Keep in mind what the slowest shutter speed is going to be in the HDR bracketed series of shots if one is going to avoid camera shake. This where my camera’s image stabilisation really pays huge dividends.

Recently I’ve gone back to shooting an average of 5 frames, rather that 3 frames, now that I’m using the camera’s electronic shutter in silent high speed drive mode (11 FPS), the faster the FPS the better, and thus I don’t have to concern myself with the number of mechanical shutter activations and any possible shutter-shock-induced vibrations. It also gives me a bit more scope in post processing. I’m not totally decrying the use of tripods as there are times in low light situations, night shots etc. where a tripod is necessary but this is true regardless of whether or not one is shooting HDR.

A few recent post COVID-19 lockdown example shots, all shot as 5-frame HDR handheld and processed in Aurora HDR which, if one cares to believe what one reads, I shouldn’t have been able to shoot handheld!. 🙂

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After all, some rules are just “made to be broken”. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

“Across the Water”

July 13, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Another 5-frame handheld HDR from my return visit to Carshalton Ponds.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/50107343441/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

“Flow and Glow”

July 12, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | 1 Comment

Hi folks,

Waterfall HDR. An experiment in letting the ghosting effect in a multi-frame HDR blur the water a little.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/50105062556/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

“On reflection”

July 12, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | 1 Comment

Hi folks,

Carshalton Ponds revisited and a different Heron from my previous upload.

50104732236_5f3a15f520_c

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/50104732236/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

PEN-F and Lumix 12-32 mm.

Kind regards

Leigh

“The Hunter”

July 12, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Towels | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Heron on the bank of the brook its gaze transfixed on its prey. Another HDR shot taken with my PEN-F and Lumix 12-32 mm.

50104710317_54d1827b13_c

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/50104710317/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

5 great devices for the travelling photographer.

July 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Five invaluable bits of kit that I wouldn’t want to be without when travelling. Most of these are useful when travelling whether you’re into photography or not and you need to charge or power multiple USB devices and perhaps need a travel router to share a hotel WIFI or a portable NAS to share movies or music etc..

Travel gear for blog

Jonkuu Two port USB 10000mAh Quick Charge 2.4 A Power Bank as one cannot have too much power for on-the-go USB powering and charging. I chose this one specifically for its high capacity, ultra compact size, light weight and its handy charge level readout as it’s nice to know how much one has left in the tank. Link.
RAVPOWER FileHub, Travel Router AC750, Wireless SD Card Reader, Photo Backup, Data Transfer, Portable NAS, 6700mAh Battery. A very versatile, multi-purpose, bit of kit. This is great for, amongst other things, SD card backups to flash drive or hard drive, it has a one key backup function which copies files directly from the SD card to the attached storage device and it also doubles as an extra power bank. It’s also handy as, on one’s return, one doesn’t have to download files to the computer from multiple SD cards, only from the portable hard disk. It makes a new time and date-stamped folder for each backup. Note: the model that I have, unlike my other devices, takes a USB Type C charge connector. To give you an indication I did a speed test and copied 498 RAW files (approx. 28 GB) from a class 10 SDHC card to my portable USB 3 hard disk drive in a little over 30 minutes. I’ve taken to using smaller capacity SD cards and backing the card up at the end of the day before storing it and fitting a new one ready for the next day. Link.
Anker 5 port USB charging hub. This little gem has travelled hundreds of miles with me and is great as you don’t have to pack multiple mains USB wall chargers. It is capable of charging/powering up to 5 USB devices simultaneously up to a maximum of 2.4 A per port from one mains wall socket. This is such a useful bit of kit that some time back I bought a second one for everyday use at home and also as a spare. Link.
Neewer USB camera battery charger, the only 100% dedicated bit of photography kit. I usually travel with two of these to charge my OM-D/PEN-F BLN-1 camera batteries and a similar model to charge my TG-5 camera batteries. Although the TG-5 has USB charging I like to have an additional charger allowing me to charge a total of two batteries at the same time. They’re very small and lightweight and immensely more useful when travelling than the camera manufacturer’s considerably bulkier and heavier mains-powered chargers and of course, hooked up to a power bank or other mobile USB power source, one can charge a battery on the move. 🙂 I have, on occasions, had one of these chargers in a jacket pocket connected to a power bank charging a battery as I’ve been walking around, cool huh!. Tip: I use a re-usable adjustable cable tie to make sure the battery doesn’t get dislodged when moving around. Link.
Western Digital Elements 1 Terrabyte portable USB hard disk drive and cable for SD card backups when connected to the RAVPOWER file hub. As I very rarely shoot any video I don’t think that I’ve ever returned from a trip with anything approaching 1 TB of image files but it’s better to have more capacity than needed rather than less. It’s also nice to use it to store and access files like equipment manuals and music etc. which otherwise take up space on my phone. Link.

Throw in some USB charge cables and a suitable figure-of-eight type mains lead for the charging hub and I’m good to go. 🙂 . Just as I’m continually refining my choice of travel camera gear to absolutely minimize size and weight and maximise versatility, I have also given a lot of thought to my other travel gear. I neither want to carry heavy gear around all day nor do I want to have to wait around for hours until my various device batteries have all finished charging and/or I want to backup my photos.

At the end of the day I want to get these things done as quickly as possible and to relax and chill with a nice meal and a cold beer (or two) 🙂 , travel ultra-light and switch over to taking some shots with my pocket-sized TG-5.

TG-5 green screen macro

I have no affiliation to any of these manufacturers, all links to products on Amazon provided solely for your convenience.

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 9, Film Pack 5 and PureRAW 6.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

ON1: Photo MAX RAW 2026

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.