According to my phone this morning it was -6C when I got up – with windchill etc. that was probably closer to -8c. Now I could have got out and captured another incredible sunrise. I could have but I didn’t. Instead, I kept in the warmth until the crimson/tangerine sunrise was long gone. Even then it was still below freezing (at the time of writing this, midday, it still ‘feels like’ -3c outside) so 30 minutes of a brisk walk through the park was as good as it got! I guess this is the coldest day of the winter so far. I don’t like the cold anymore. I guess my bones are getting just a little older with every frost!
Working on the image I captured I noticed this…29000th of a second is impressive!
So the outline drawing continues. I know this is silly, unless you to enjoy the challenge of drawing, but there is something very satisfying of sitting with a sketchbook and pen and making marks. It would be a boring world if we all liked the same things at the same time.
Is it too early to ask what a second term President Trump do about the increased chaos in the Middle east? I think it is but not by much. Over the next few months the United States of America will slowly pull itself apart over the former President. The vortex from this will drag all of us much closer to the edge.
I suspect few Americans understand just what an affect they are having on the world beyond their borders, after all it is fair for them to argue that this an American presidential election and so the rest of the world doesn’t count. I wish that were so or that any form of isolationism would work – it won’t – just look at the land border with Mexico as to why the USA can’ seal itself off from the rest of us. All that will happen is that the relative calming effect that the the USA has on the world order will diminish to everyone’s loss.
Whatever the next 12 months brings it isn’t going to be pretty.
Another dawn…another cold photographer. It is getting lighter earlier each day but we are still in the middle of winter. Still a bit of cold isn’t going to stop me (I wasn’t that positive whilst walking the fields of Wistow this morning!)
Still the sheep appeared to be nice and warm in their thick woollen coats. I believe that this is where St. Wistan/Wigstan was slaughtered but these things are mostly lost in the mists of time. He has a nice church named in his honour – so I guess that is something?
Everyday I try and learn something new. I think this is the only way to live and I do my best but some days I fail. Getting a new camera helps me keep to my aim. I have set my new iPhone to save images as RAW files and when it does that it the results so far are stunning. However, this being an iPhone it is not that straightforward. The default position of the camera is to save an image as an .HEIC format and you have to click a button on the screen to actually save the image as a RAW image (DNG actually but close enough). In the heat of the moment I forget to click this button so I get a HEIC image which, whilst very useful, has nothing like the data of the RAW file.
This is what happened this morning and it was annoying! However, I have overcome this frustration by diving into the settings and changing a setting. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this is that I knew about this but overlooked it when I set the camera up initially. But life is like that – well at least my life is.
Has this been the wettest start to a New Year? Not sure. What I am sure it must be up there in the top 10. I am sure that this is wettest start to a New year that I can remember. We are used to the local park flooding as this is what a floodplain does. This is no comfort for anyone who lives on the floodplain or tries to travel across the flooded area. But we all have to adapt to the actual circumstances of our lives rather than just try and pretend the water isn’t there and then complain when things flood.
What is really unusual is that there is a new shallow lake that has been formed through the whole of the Soar Valley that wasn’t there just a few days ago. The good news is that it hasn’t rained for 24 hours and the water is starting to drain away. The bad news is that the land is so saturated it will take weeks of dry weather to really see the back of the temporary lake. The winters in Britain are notorious for their long dry spells (haha) so I guess the land will be saturated for the rest of the winter – we might have to start to think of a name for the temporary lake – Lear’s Lake?.
I didn’t believe the hype but you know what I’m starting to believe – the iPhone 15 Pro is very very good – especially in low light. These are all hand held low light ProRes images which have absolutely no right being this sharpe (trust me they are in full res – not so here). They are not perfect by any mean but that really isn’t the point. Any camera that is hand held in low light isn’t but these are really good despite that qualification.
So what have I learnt? This is looking promising and lets hope over the months and years it keeps up this promise.
Well that didn’t take long. New year new camera. Actually, I’ve been turning this plan over in my mind for a couple of months. Anyone who has been following this blog will know I’ve been undertaking an awful lot of testing over the last few months, mostly with my iPhone. The conclusion I came to was very simple – the iPhone 13 camera just wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t actually bad but it wasn’t really that good. I suspect the real problem lies with the dreaded computational photography – I just thought the results produced by the Apple camera app. were usually very suspect. (Of course your views may vary and that is fine.) So today was the day I took the plunge and podded out some more of my cash into the Apple money pit. I am now the proud owner of a iPhone 15 Pro.
There are so many new features I’ve got to get my head around but the first images are very promising. Now I really need to underline the iPhone 15 Pro is not really a match for my ‘proper’ camera and the selection of lenses I have built up over the years. What it is is the best camera I have with me all the time and so will be used when I’m out with family and friends when carrying a large back with a selection of lenses just isn’t going to work.
The weather has been impossible. We are having a very very wet winter and todays it has rained all day. Still I have got out and tried the camera in what will probably the most demanding conditions it is likely to face. It made quite a good fist of everything thrown at it. It is early days but I’m impressed.
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