Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Have a great 2012 and always good light for photography!

Thanks for visiting my bog.

Since it's the end of the year it is also time to reflect back on some of my favourite pictures. I don't know if it's me getting more critical of my work or if it's just less inspiration but I am not as happy with this years pictures as I was with last year's pictures when looking back.

The pictures are in no particular order other than in the order I found them to add to this post. My comments are under each picture.

I like the colours in this but really liked the peaceful scene of them being together. 

 I don't know exactly why I like this picture so much over some of the others I took in Cambodia or even just the boat trip but it keeps drawing me in whenever I look through.

This I like mostly for the way the Canon lens captured it with fairly low contrast and almost washed out look. 

I do not take a lot of concert pictures but this one I quite like, I did some processing to it but not that much. 

I am not a fan of posed pictures or photo shoots with models but when a friend asked me to take some pictures of his wife for her album, I could not say no and am actually very happy with the results.

I took quite a lot of landscape pictures this year, in Scotland, in Colorado, Vietnam and Cambodia for example but this one from Holyhead I like best. The boat at the bottom provides a great scale to the big sea. 

The Nokton lens on the GF1 is still one of my favourite lenses and this picture would most likely be my pic of the year. It basically shows what I like about the UK.

I love journalistic and documentary photography, unfortunately I did not get round to do much of it this year but here I was in the right place at the right time.

This picture I like because of the  lines in the sand and because the guy looks out of place carrying his table on the beach.

This I like because of the colours and the shadows of the trees that almost hide the guy running across.

Looking at Me

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/125, ISO 1250, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)

Hooded

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/125, ISO 1181, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 53mm)

Sunset in Greenwich Park

GXR A12-M, f5.6, 1/1230, ISO 200, RAW, 75mm (Jupiter-8 f2.0 50mm L)

Staircase

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/125, ISO 271, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)

Portrait of a Deer

GXR A12-M, f1.4, 1/217, ISO 200, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to all of you, thanks for following my blog!

Have a great time and hope you receive all you wish for.

Reflections of Rain

GXR A12-M, f2.0, 1/64, ISO 3200, RAW, 75mm (Jupiter-8 f2.0 50mm L)

Buying Pearls for Christmas

GXR A12-M, f2.0, 1/125, ISO 295, RAW, 75mm (Jupiter-8 f2.0 50mm L)

Another quick day trip to Frankfurt but the weather was still grey and rainy like last time so not great for photography. This is actually the first picture I took after arriving at the train station from the airport.
The Jupiter-8 is a very nice lens and has a nice bokeh and colours. This is not bad for a lens that costs around £15-20 and you get an old Russian rangefinder camera thrown in for free.

Looking the Wrong Way

GXR A12-M, f2.0, 1/125, ISO 1532, RAW, 75mm (Jupiter-8 f2.0 50mm L)

Green

GXR A12-M, f2.8, 1/1150, ISO 200, RAW, 75mm (Jupiter-8 f2.0 50mm L)

Ricoh GXR A12-M and Sony NEX-5N Comparison

This is not my own comparison but one written by photographer Sam Waldron and it marks the first guest post on my blog. I am thinking of having more guest posts on my blog in the future.

I really liked the comparison and wanted to share it with people who do not read the forums it was posted on. So thanks to Sam for allowing me to post this here.

You can see his great work on his website here:

Sam Waldron Photography

Now without further ado, let's get to his comparison.

Introduction

I've been using the NEX-5N with M mount lenses for about 6 weeks now – I've been happy with the set up and i'm getting better results than with my D7000 and lenses but my interest was piqued when I heard the rumour the GXR M mount could be shipping with the Sony 16MP chip in the new year.

Autofocus isn't something i've ever really needed or wanted – this is the type of thing I like to shoot.

Beyond - Sam Waldron Photography

My target output is prints, up to 16” x 24” (or Panoramas which are stitched to any size).

To my surprise, a local company had the GXM M module for rent and i've been using it the past three days. Unfortunately the weather has been terrible here so I only had a limited amount of time to do some decent shooting out and about.

I'm using it with my lenses (all very good but not without quirks) – Voigtlander 15mm M mount, Leica 35mm 2.8 Summaron, Voigtlander Nokton 40mm F1.4 and Leica 90mm F4 Elmar-C.

My general thoughts at how the cameras compare purely as a M lens platform are as follows.

The Camel Room

GXR A12-M, f1.4, 1/125, ISO 456, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

Ankunft C

GXR A12-M, f2.8, 1/125, ISO 2167, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

Call at the Station

GXR A12-M, f1.4, 1/125, ISO 2363, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

Retro Light

GXR A12-M, f1.4, 1/125, ISO 951, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

The Fountain

iPhone 4, f2.4, JPG, Hipstamatic app

Italian Menswear

GXR A12-M, f5.6, 1/350, ISO 200, JPG, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.4 35mm)

Windows

GXR A12-M, f5.6, 1/3000, ISO 200, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)

Hampton Court Palace Visit

Just a quick series from my visit to Hampton Court Palace, all pictures are with the Nokton f1.2 35mm and most also taken at f1.2.

Just an Empty Bench

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/125, ISO 2934, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)

The Long Table

The Long Table and a long series from there. The Long Table is a food night market in Hackney and a good place to try some street food and some more exotic drinks. It is also a good place for photography but you will need a fast lens and even then might struggle at times.

I had the GXR with the 35mm f1.2 Nokton lens but despite this it was not always easy to get the shot. This is a series of the pictures I like best. For more pictures you can have a look at my Flickr set here.

Behind the Glass

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/73, ISO 3200, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)

Not sure why but I really like this picture and reminds me of the scene from a movie, this is why I cropped it to 16:9 format.

Looking at Reflections of St. Paul's

GXR A12-M, f5.6, 1/189, ISO 200, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)


This is looking in the opposite direction from where I took this picture, just a few months later and with a different lens.
I really like the details that the GXR managed to pick up in this picture..

Windowshopping

GXR A12-M, f1.2, 1/143, ISO 200, RAW, 53mm (Voigtlander Nokton f1.2 35mm)


The great thing about using legacy lenses and M lenses in particular is that each has a different look and characteristic, the Nokton lensess for example render reds completely different while the GR lens does this with greens and blues.

Old and New

GRD III, f4.0, 1/1070, ISO 64, RAW

Children of Angkor

While at Angkor Wat, my posts focussed mostly on temples and not much on people in and around them. I mentioned I would post some people shots later on and since I have been doing some sorting of my pictures today it was kind of the right time.

Most of these pictures have been taken with the Canon f1.8 50mm lens and are out of camera JPGs.