MOORLAND POSTS Black and white tutorial

POSTS, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Posts on Peak District moorland, near the Cat and Fiddle Inn, near Buxton, Derbyshire.

Well we had our first fine weather here in England last week: sharp crisp, frosty days with clear blue skies and bright sunshine, so it was my first real chance to get out this year and do a little photography. My first trip out was to the Peak District National Park near to the spa town of Buxton, walking near the Cat and Fiddle Inn which I understand is the highest pub in England. Of course, at this time of the year, there are no leaves on the trees: it will be a couple of months before spring arrives here, so the landscapes are still a little bare and bleak. last year I took a few sand dune photos and decided that I should really have taken some in black and white. Of course, you can convert colour images into black and white ones on photoshop, and that is explained in another post under the label 'colour to black and white'. However, you don't get quite the same result as taking the image in black and white on your camera. So for this image, I set the camera mode to black and white instead of colour. The advantage of this was that I could use contrast filters to make the image more dramatic. For this image I used a primary red filter (Wratten 25). This tends to darken the sky, making it more dramatic, and creates more contrast in the vegetation leading to a more dramatic picture. My new Ricoh camera has a 28mm equivalent wide angle lens, and this too gives a sense of space and drama, enabling me to get close to the fence posts and a low down vantage point, so that the posts stand out more dramatically against the sky, giving a stronger composition. notice again the rule of thirds, with the posts and horizon situated at approximately one third divisions in the frame.

Sunset trees, near Consall, Staffordshire. Camera choice

sunset trees, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Sunset trees taken with my Samsung camera. People sometimes ask me what camera I use. Most of the images on this blog are taken on a digital camera. They were taken on a Samsung Digimax V4. This is a 4 million pixel camera which I bought a few years ago now. What I liked about it was that it had lots of manual override functions, so I could change expose, aperture or shutter speeds if I wished to. It also had a moderate optical zoom. I find digital zoom to be a waste of time. I have just upgraded my camera to a Ricoh Caplio R7. This is a very neat, small compact camera. Again, I liked its range of manual override features. It gives an 8 million pixel image, so this is twice the definition of my old camera. Also, it has a great optical zoom range, an equivalent 28mm-200mm zoom on a 35mm camera. I like the good wide angle since I mainly take landscape shote, but the good zoom range means that I can get up closer when I need to. It uses a lithium-ion battery which lasts quite a while and is neat and compact. My old Samsung used AA batteries but drained them very quickly. My new camera is proving very satisfactory, though I have to be careful on telephoto shots as the focus takes a few moments to adjust.

FOOTPRINTS Tutorial - Camera details

FOOTPRINTS, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Footprints on a sand dune at Talacre beach in North Wales, U.K.

Most of the photos on this blog are taken with a Samsung Digimax V4 digital camera. It is now a few years old and has a resolution of 4 megapixels. It was was my first entry into digital photography, having used 35mm for some years. I chose it becuase of its low to mid range price and because of the features that it has. In the end I have only used some of its features, the most useful ones I have found to be are:

Night mode - for night shots

The +/- exposure control so that I can override the metering system when taking shots in difficult lighting conditions such bright sun on snow, or sand, or into the light shots.

S or shutter mode - if I want to freeze fast moving action. The ASM control gives me complete manual override over the automatic metering system which is sometimes useful.

The camera has automatic focussing and also close up or Macro mode, which I sometimes find useful for the ocasional close up shot.

The camera also has automatic flash - the flash works in poor light conditions, and again, it useful to be able to turn this off in certain situations.

The camera also has 3x optical zoom. Since I tend to do landscape photography, I often use the wide angle end of the zoom - I am a big fan of ultra wide angle. So much so that I still use my 35mm camera for some shots because I have 24mm and 18mm ultra wide angle lenses for that camera, which enables me to get some shots that I cannot get with the digital one. I rarely use the digital zoom, it just lowers the quality of theimage, though I may just use the lower end of the digital zoom very ocasionally.

Of course the great advantage of digital is the instant feedback of results and no film to load. So I can take lots of shots to make sure I get what I want, without worrying about film cost and wastage. Those shots that don't work can be instantly deleted.