Inside your camera is a noble but sadly overlooked piece of silicon. The chip in question processes the data created by the camera’s sensor and turns it into a recognisable image.
Light Work
Lens Diffraction
Photographers are generally obsessed with sharpness. Put your hand up if you’ve ever scutinised a print just a few inches from your nose to check its sharpness? Hmmm, perhaps it’s just me then.
Neutral Density Filters
To create an image you need a certain amount of light. If I were to tell that I regularly use a filter that reduces the amount of light that reaches a camera’s sensor would you think me a little odd? Well, there is such a filter and it’s called an ND or neutral density filter.
The Joy of Primes
The easiest option when buying a new lens for a system camera is to pick a zoom (and in fact virtually all kit lenses supplied with new cameras are zooms). Practically speaking zoom lenses make a lot sense. A zoom lens lets you adjust the focal length to one degree or another.
Looking at a Pyramid
And now for something completely different, a man carrying a camera made out of plastic. I’ve used quite a few different cameras over the course of my photographic career. Some were very sophisticated indeed; coming with manuals that were so thick they could be used as offensive weapons. Others were simple, efficient machines that got …
Deficient to the tune of one
I was up in the Cheviot Hills the other day, climbing a particularly craggy and overgrown slope, when I realised to my dismay that one of my legs had fallen off.
Thingimys and wotsits
On another post I wax lyrical about plastic cameras and the puzzlingly important place they have in my equipment checklist. Well now I’m going to get sentimental and teary-eyed about a variety of non-camera related gizmos that all contributed to making the above image possible.
Dunstanburgh Castle
I’m often asked where my favourite place to photograph is. That’s a tricky one to answer. Generally I wriggle my way out by saying that it’s wherever I happen to be at the time. However, I do have one subject that I’m not sure I could ever tire of: Dunstanburgh Castle.
Buachaille Etive Mòr
Forming the backdrop to movies such as the Braveheart and Highlander, the distinctive pyramid shape Stob Dearg, the main peak of Buachaille Etive Mòr, is arguably the most recognisable of Scotland’s mountains. Buachaille Etive Mòr translates as the ‘great shepherd of the Etive’, the Etive being the river that winds its way around the base of …
Cauldron Snout
You can feel it in the soles of your boots before you see it. You know that something mighty is happening, just out of sight, just below you. An elemental force, wild and untameable. And then you are there. Standing open-mouthed. Looking down at… Cauldron Snout.