photography

So very busy

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

Had a great time in Berlin last weekend. It wasn’t really what I expected and the really famous sites (check point charlie, Brandenburg gate) left me a bit disappointed. We did see a lot of neat stuff though and we really lucky with the weather. The highlight of the weekend was probably the Berlin Dom which was very cool.

The trip was also the first time I had used my new Sigma 28-200mm lens for my SLR. I found it a real pleasure to use and am really looking forward to seeing what the photos are like. The films should be developed this week so I hope to get some photos up on the website by early next week.

Life is still extremely busy and I haven’t had a chance to do any hacking for ages. Doesn’t look like this week will provide too many opportunites with me busy nearly every night!

Photograpy is hard

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

I got my first lot of photos developed to day since I started using my Canon SLR again. I have been doing heaps of reading and trying to learn as much as I can about photography in the last few weeks. I’ve decided to finally get serious about something that I have had a bit of a side interest in for years. It turns out that taking good photographs is a lot more difficult than I thought!

I shot a couple of rolls of film over the last couple of weekends playing around with exposure priority, apeture priority, and various other settings on my camera. Pretty much every photo sucks. It has been a lesson in humility and I can see that this will take some practice!

I’ve put a couple of photos up on my web site, mostly so people will have something to refer back to in time to come and be able to see how much I have improved 😉

Here they are:

There are various things wrong with all of them. The most obvious being the photo of the underground train being very blurry but I like it anyway. I intend to retake that shot once I have my new tripod in a month or so.

I got the films processed and digitally scanned at Jessops and am not very happy with the results. I realise these aren’t the greatest photos, but the quality is quite grainy and I know my camera and the kodak film I was using produce better results than this. Next time I think I’ll try Snappy Snaps as I hear they are pretty good.