Retro looks.

Hi,

As everyone who has visited my blog knows my love of retro things is hardly a secret. 🙂 I treated myself to a leather camera strap for my PEN-F camera. It’s made by a Germany company called Tarion and, because I’ve taken to wearing the camera cross-body, which somewhat spares the back of my neck, I wanted a suitably long enough strap. This one is adjustable between 118cm and 145cm (46-57 inches) and does the job very nicely. The neck padding is adjustable which is another nice feature. The only thing that I’m wary off is the buckle prong which just conceivably could scratch something so I found a temporary solution of a plastic cap that pushes over it until I can come up with something better. I didn’t want to use tape as that would look very ugly and tacky.

Best wishes,

Leigh

A spot of retouching

June 7, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment | Leave a comment

Hi,

No, not photo retouching but lens hood retouching. I noticed that the matt black paint had chipped on the inside of a couple of my lens hood to reveal the bare silver metal. Fixed with a black permanent marker pen and left to dry before refitting. 🙂

“Up to the Downs”

June 7, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Back to my roots, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

“Up to the Downs”, The South Downs in the distance. Walked as far down this path as I could until my legs were hurting to an extent where I knew that I’d have to turn around or get stranded in the middle of nowhere. As the saying goes, “No pain, no gain”

Have a great day, best wishes, Leigh

“River Scene”.

June 6, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Back to my roots, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, River, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi,

River Arun at Pulborough. I’m really loving the perspective of the 20mm lens, 17mm is a bit too wide for me and 25mm is much too narrow especially where freedom of movement is constricted as was the case here. I guess the acid test is, if I had taken the shot with a zoom lens would I have framed it differently and I don’t think that I would have done so and my lightest, albeit weather-sealed PRO grade zoom is 150% heavier. I’m in my element in this type of environment, it’s what I love the most.

All the best, Leigh

“Pulborough”

June 6, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Back to my roots, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, photography, River, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Not quite the shot that I wanted but not that far off, River Arun at Pulborough, West Sussex. Olympus PEN-F and Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens, 5 frame handheld HDR.

Best wishes,

Leigh

Out tomorrow, a photo walk in the sunshine.

June 5, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Paintography, photography | Leave a comment

Hi,

I’m off to a place called Pulborough in West Sussex tomorrow. I’ve passed through it on the train several times and there’s one shot in particular, a really nice scenic view that I really want to try and get. It might require something a bit wider than my 20mm so I’m taking either my tiny 12-32mm lens or my even tinier 14mm lens with me as well as from the vantage point I have in mind there will be little room for manoeuvre. It’s rare for me to plan a shot but I know exactly what I would like to get tomorrow. I’m also going to give my PEN-F camera an overdue airing as I haven’t used it for a while. Not running tomorrow but runs at the weekends, there’s also the South Downs Light Railway that I intend to check out with a view to a return visit. We’re currently enjoying a nice warm sunny spell here so the weather should be really pleasant. One small, lightweight camera, two small, lightweight lenses, a sunny day photo walk with a pit stop for light refreshments, what could be better?! 🙂 , as Robin Wong calls it, “shutter therapy”. I’ve posted lots of images taken with the 20mm and 12-32mm lenses, In case you’re unfamiliar with the 14mm f/2.5 lens, here’s one that I took in a local shopping centre some years ago with this lens and a second shot taken with the 14mm lens and MCON-P02 Macro Converter attachment and diffused bounce flash.

Kind regards

Leigh

“Water Feature”

June 4, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Leigh Kemp, photography | 2 Comments

Hi,

Something a bit different. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

“Fun in the park”

June 3, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Back to my roots, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi,

“Fun in the park”, Hotham Park, Bognor Regis.

Have a great weekend.

Leigh

Sharpness, is it the holy grail?

June 3, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography | Leave a comment

Hi,

I recently saw a comment by a chap in which he mentioned that he had “broken the rules” by softening an image. I very often deliberately soften or diffuse my images in order to try and get a more atmospheric, dreamy look in my landscape work as I find that one gets a result bordering on the clinical when the images are tack sharp. Of course this is purely a personal thing and, for a lot of subjects/genres very sharp imagery is what’s desired. I’m not talking about “bokeh” here, that’s different, I’m talking about the image as a whole although one could argue that using bokeh has become a sort of rule in it’s own when it might be more interesting not to habitually isolate the subject and remove it from the context of the surroundings.

I’ve always believed that there aren’t any or, maybe better put as shouldn’t be any rules in creative arts, it seems to run contrary to the very nature of things and the antipathy of experimentation. In an age where advances in AI are causing such concern in general and, specifically in this context, in photography, if ever I get replaced by a robot landscape photographer, I can only hope that someone gives the thing an artistic soul and programs in that rules are very often made to be broken or, better still, there are no rules. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

New work: “A walk in the woods”

June 2, 2023 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Back to my roots, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, photography, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi,

A woodland scene.

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.