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and over on Clickasnap, finally gotten around to editting some photos again having transitioned to a new PC.

500px...is it over?

A few years back 500px.com burst onto the scene as a site for photographers to share their pictures, like so many sites but with a new, fresh look. There is a bit of a community spirit and people share and support each others photos.

I like having a place to display by pictures and there is an interesting model to promote the best photos (notably none of mine but the quality is stunning).

However, I have placed a number of photos for licensing. Indeed I have managed to sell 3 to date... For the princely total of $0.19, for all 3. The last one I checked was for sale through Getty at a minimum of $50, for which I received 3c. Well actually I haven't received anything as my efforts are miles away from the minimum pay out.

I did raise with 500px how I could receive so little but they were unable to explain how minimum $59 list price boils down to only 3c to me but did end with what amounted to "if you don't like it you don't have to license your images through us" in language distinctly expressing a lack of interest.

All images duly unlicensed. 

Will it make any difference. No not really, I am not making any money and my images really aren't up there with the best, I am just hopeful that one day I might be able to contribute to the cost of my gear. That said, I have read posts from some of the bigger players and it isn't just me. 

Flashing

No not that sort of flashing.

I am trying to learn how to use the flash on my camera more effectively and this stems from a lifelong avoidance and being able to see the effects of adding flash on the production of so many pictures I see online.

I am not expecting this to change my photography radically, after all I think I am still the weak point in both the technical and artistic areas, not my kit, but I like to try things.

I have been experimenting with my Neewer NW400 flash unit. It's a speedlite by any other name but at a much more appealing price point for experimentation. I am impressed. Initially  I thought my results were disappointing and that the unit perhaps overstated its guide number by a long way but it turned out that I had dialled down the output and indeed at full power it does pack a punch.

In the Summer I was try some experiments with flower photography (note, none to show, highly experimental, early deletion) and discovered that I can remote trigger the flash using my on camera pop up (Olympus E-M10 mk2, its a great little flash unit when not running on auto) but in bright summer light, without drowning my subject, even at close range it was not triggering the off camera flash.

I had a look at radio triggers a couple of days ago and the Neewer N1T-o was £19.99 on Amazon so worth a try and Amazon reliably delivered next day.

Does the wireless trigger work? Well for the first 45 minutes no it didn't. The manual for the flash unit is in English. The manual for the trigger isn't. I finally found this video on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBfwRljoYv0 from Robert Hall Photography which goes a long way to making some sense of the functions but still didn't answer the basic "how to make it work" question.

All the while this isn't helped by my degree of confusion when talking about groups, I've only got one flash so why are we talking about groups and a nagging concern that the flash manual states that a firmware update may be necessary to use the wireless functionality. It helpfully says that the usb port can be used to update the firmware but then the company provides no firmware update information of any sort on their website.

Armed with fresh batteries and a healthy dose of common sense I try again and discover it's dead easy actually and leaving the trigger on default settings but setting the flash to wireless slave....remember I had one flash so was using master. I was being rather slow on the uptake there but slowly learning.

Broken Glass

There we were sitting down at dinner and there was a thump from upstairs. Not a clue what that thump was so dinner was enjoyed by all.

Sometime later I went upstairs to discover my desk top a mess and my camera on the floor, all looking like signs of a cat quickly exiting the scene.

This is more worrying, I can see pieces of plastic on the floor. So I carefully turn the camera over and see that the newly applied L-Bracket has a couple of newly acquired chips on the paintwork so has taken some impact. Oh dear, the lens cap is where that missing plastic is from and it is very wedged into the lens, takes a bit of tugging before I regret doing so because of the shower of glass released over the floor.

I can see now that the UV filter, and hopefully only the UV filter, has taken the brunt of the impact on the floor - it has taken the impact from the edge of the lens cover and taken all the force and shattered the glass and filled the gap between the filter and the lens itself with shards.

Devil of a job to free it, luckily I have a filter wrench that eventually loosens it up enough that I can hold it facing downwards and start to release the shards and finally unscrew the filter.

Ten minutes of careful cleaning with an air brush, a brush and then lens wipes shows that I cannot discern any damage to the lens surface. A couple of minutes of testing of the camera appears to show, at different distances, that the camera is doing what it should as expected.

The final damage :

replacement cost  for the same item, a Hoya pro-1 digital uv(0) filter,  £17.99 on Amazon, will be here in 2 days time - which gives me ample time to test how the lens performs with no UV filter in place.

Why would I do that? Well having just completed a quick google survey of which model filter to purchase the conclusions appear to be that the hoya filter is good value for money but more importantly the debate about having another layer of glass on the front rages on.

Me? Well unless I discover something miraculous before I screw the new arrival on, I will be doing so because I get a strong feeling as how tonight's events went that the < £20 on one layer of glass has avoided necessitating a £400 replacement.

I know that some pundits make an argument that would this one off saving is not worthwhile compared to a potential reduction in image quality all of the time but I, as an amateur photographer who refute that as I tote my kit around in a rucksack, up and down hills and mountains in all weathers, along country lanes on my bike and all those normal uses and I've had a couple of scratched filters, one a UV that was replaced, I've trashed a hoya polariser (dreadful quality, the coatings rubbed away the first time I cleaned it)  and my B&W polariser has a scratch and hasn't been replaced because it simply cannot be seen on the final image. More importantly though, I remain convinced that the capability of the person standing at the rear of the lens has a much greater impact on the final image than the reduction in image quality at the front of the lens caused by the filter at my skill level.

I would like to think I will come back here in years to come and review this and change my mind but it feels unlikely.

Wivelsfield Big Bang, part 2

As a second post about the Wivelsfield Bonfire Society fireworks, Wivelsfield Big Bang at the school on the 19th October, 2018, I will include the fireworks pictures themselves.

I feel these photos "come out well" and certainly display on screen with some impact. 

The picture above is my personal favourite, the bursts of light almost look like dandelions on a sunny day.

There was a small amount of processing, a couple of pictures were cropped, having set the camera up and made minor adjustments at the beginning to try to frame the shots correctly I had to go with what I had set and hope; best will in the world the rear LCD, located somewhere near my knees, is only an indication at best and fireworks do their thing at various heights. You will the top of a small tree in a lot of shots, I had no idea that was there until loading up on the PC.

With regards positioning, I need a better position but whilst I was attending and taking photos I was also dressed in a hi-viz jacket (and I can tell you batman looked cooler in a hi-viz that I did, not something you see everyday) and manning the boundary to ensure no one strayed close to the fireworks.

With regards processing the changes I made were solely about making the pictures stand out.

I changed the colour temperature, not 100% consistently but most started at around 3000k on auto, I saw an online suggestion of using Daylight (5500k) but I found that over the top for the strength of colour (let's call the predominant theme tango orange) and generally was using 4000-5000 (my skills are truly amateur here, so I mean it was 4000 or 4500 or 5000).

 

I did have to tweak the tint a couple of times, it seems fireworks are predominantly orange so orange and red fireworks together become too dominant so I have tried to bring back a better range of colour, for some reason my pictures tended to be around +7 towards the pink end of the scale (I need to experiment with the camera, I am not sure whether that is a feature of my raw files or Lightroom).

Blacks were increased to make the sky blacker, the background actually looks across Burgess Hill to the West which the usual orange glow of street lamps so making the sky a little blacker makes the fireworks stand out better.

Highlights were reduced a little, recovering all of the pixels tends to make for a flat picture so some burn out of pixels, the centre of the firework explosion, seems acceptable to me but a reduction outside of that brings colours away from just white.

Clarity was increased, generally around +40 to really make the streams of sparks stand out.

I increased vibrance to somewhere around +3- which brings the colours out.

And a small increase, around +10, for Saturation gives strong colours, online advice was suggesting +20 but that just went straight to hurting my eyes.

The final alteration was sharpening, some of the pictures, indeed the majority are untouched but with such a lot of movement some needed a little sharpening to add some punch.

A couple I did also adjust the luminance setting for Noise reduction, around +10, just to reduce the noise I was seeing. Interestingly inspite of using the same settings throughout once the show was underway the amount of sharpening and consequent luminance adjustment varied but in practical terms I am not sure that shows on the final output one way or another; so that is something else I need to work on, improving my appreciation of what the final picture will look like at each stage of change.

The bonfire society will be back next year, to keep up to date visit their Facebook page.

Wivelsfield Big Bang

We attended the Wivelsfield Bonfire Society fireworks, Wivelsfield Big Bang at the school last Friday for the movie themed event.

Tickets were sold out and circa 900 people in attendance with a good vibe as mostly locals and a strong support for / from nursery and primary aged children as an ideal fireworks evening for them (safe, easy to park, no long walks or muddy paths and lots of light up things to buy and run around the playground with).

This was a good opportunity to take some photos using the Olympus E-M10 Mk11. Kitted out with plenty of batteries and memory cards and the 14-42 mm pancake lens as my widest angle lens I fired up Live Comp mode, dialled in half a second, iso 200 and F5.6, plugged in my trusty ebay cable release, found a spot for my tripod and went to town.

For this post I will include the pictures of kids running around (it was dark, I assume they were kids, there might have been adults too) with led lights.

At the start there was a pleasant sunset for the background.

But it didn't take long for darkness to full descend.

Not that dark put any dampner on the running around going on, everyone was in high spirits.

Hope you enjoy the pictures, if you want to know more please post a comment.

Landscape Piccie

A view of the New Forest from our recent camping trip.

Bluebells

A couple of pictures in amongst the bluebells in a woods near Chailey. This particular location had previous been unremarkable but a year or two back the trees had been logged making shaded but more open ground resulting in a thriving patch of blue bells.

Crazed Glass

Went for a walk around Shoreham and amonst my pictures were a couple of crazed glass on the new footbridge across the Adur.

Lewes, rainy, grey.

Having received my new Olympus 60mm f2.8 Macro lens I went out looking for a use. Not much hope on a rainy day but it was a new lens so I was determined to point it at something.

To my surprise I found a skate park just behind Tesco that I didn't know existed and being both wet and deserted made for some interesting pictures.