Trying To Lead Two Lives & A New Arrival

Another week has gone by and my posting rate seems to have collapsed.

Sometimes I think we try to lead two lives. The one we want to live and and the one we 'have to' live. Let's call that 'real life'. Over the last weeks once again real life has kept me under the cosh and my day job has taken me away from home and prevented me from keeping up my photography, my blog and my participation in the blogs of others.

So now I'm back home and once again I'm trying to squeeze the experiences of the photographer / bloggers life, the one where I meet new people and enjoy new experiences, the one I prefer to follow, into real life.

Before I went away I ordered a new lens and thankfully my return to home brought me face to face with my new purchase for the first time.

I had wanted to invest in a 50mm prime lens for some time since I started reading up on prime lenses and portrait photography.


Unfortunately new lenses are well out of my budget so I searched high and low for a second-hand lens but couldn't find an auto focus version anywhere. After much searching and consideration I located a manual lens which I took delivery of on Saturday.

After a false start and an embarrassingly frantic call to the supplier I realised I had to change a setting on my camera to accept a manual lens but after that I was up and running.

There was nothing else I could do but go out and practice.

Firstly I went out to an old stately home estate which had some great backdrops for some practice shots. I love the texture on the old walls and this shot of a trailing plant draped over it. I spent a good hour wandering through the grounds practising with the new lens only occasionally swapping out to my 18-55 when I needed a shorter lens to fit a wide view into.

My second outing was to Bristol Docks, a largely regenerated dockside area with some great modern features. It was a largely windy but mostly sunny day and presented some real opportunities to get some test shots.

I managed to get some, in my opinion, great shots and some which were somewhat out of focus, the reason for which I don't currently understand.

So my second life has managed to mostly emerge over the course of this weekend. I'm hoping that it will stay near the surface and will stay there in the coming weeks.

I do have an exciting photographic event coming up later this week. I hope to be able to bring more news of this soon.

Click here to check out the full 50mm set on Flickr and if you use Flickr yourself then why not link up with me while you're there.

In the meantime, have a great week.

Kevin
Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/kevleighton

The Pentax' First Outing - My Tuesday shots 05/04

Having recently taken delivery of a new Pentax camera last weekend was my first chance to take it out for some test shots. There are two lenses in play here, an 18-55 and a 50-200.

ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 47.5mm










Macro shots have always been amongst my favourites so I started with the 18-55  lens, cranked the aperture to f5.6 took some close-up shots.

ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/180 sec
Aperture: 4.5
Focal Length: 21.2mm
Flash Used: Yes









This shot is of a footpath under a railway, taken in bright sunlight through the contrasting tunnel was very dark. I used the flash to lighten the tunnel and I'm somewhat pleased with the result.

ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/320 sec
Aperture: 7.1
Focal Length: 62.5mm









Finally I took this at range using the 50-200 lens. I wanted the horse as the main subject as well as the hills in the background. May be next time I'd use a different aperture but overall I was very happy with the results, and I hope you enjoy the images.

Another Week Gone By .... a birthday, a new camera and a general update.

Wow - another week has gone by - seemingly so much to do and so little time, except this week was a week with a difference.

It was a "special" birthday week, which spanned two weekends. The first weekend was a party at home, it was great to see all the relatives, some neighbours, some long lost friends and some new acquaintances who I hope I'll also be able to call friends. Very many thanks to my wife and son and all who helped to put it together and keep us sane. A special mention goes to my daughter who had all along maintained she was unable to join us and then did so in the middle of the afternoon and later impressing us with a rendition of "Come To Your Senses" from the show "Tick Tick Boom".

The second weekend was a trip to London with just the four of us to see a show called  "The Childrens Hour" with Keira Knightly and Elisabeth Moss. An excellent play. Many thanks to my daughter for sorting out the accomodation.

Highlight on the pressie front was a new dSLR camera, a Pentax KX. I don't want to get into the discussion about the pro's and con's of the different brands but needless to say I did a lot of research and so far am very happy with my purchase.

I loved my "old" camera, a bridge Panasonic Lumix FZ8 but felt that moving up to a full dSLR was an opportunity to improve the style, techniques and overall quality of my photography. I was lucky enough to find a box set on sale with both an 18-55 and a 50-200 lens for not much more than the single lens set.

I feel sure we'll be seeing some images from the new camera very soon.