Looking out the Train Window

GR, f2.8, 1/60, ISO 6400, RAW

To celebrate World Photography Day 2016, I thought I feature a photo on my blog I didn't post before and will tell something about it.

I took this photo at the beginning of my Around the World trip while on the train from Cologne to Copenhagen.

This photo happened mostly by coincidence and quite a bit of luck and almost no preparation. Not being a big portrait photographer, I like to take more candid portraits instead of posed portraits.

Still, while in the overnight train to Copenhagen and chatting with the other people in my compartment about my travel plans and photography one of the girls told me that she always wanted a photo sitting in front of an open train window.

Since we were in a train and had a window we could open right next to us I was happy to take said photo for her.

I did warn her that it would probably make more sense to wait till the morning given it was dark outside and there might not be much in terms of a background.

She was happy to try it and for her it was more about the wind in her hair and capturing this instead of any views outside.

The Ricoh GR with a fixed 28mm f2.8 lens is not an ideal portrait camera but it had to do for this photo. I set it up to TAv mode at f2.8 and after some test photos decided on 1/60 since it seemed to cope well with the train movement and dim light inside the carriage, while keeping the ISO low enough.

The train was passing by some lit up houses, some railroad crossings but it was going too fast to be able to predict when the next lit up place would pass by the window.

To make sure the wind was coming towards her, I had to face the opposite way of the driving direction, not letting me even anticipate anything lit up passing by the window.

But as luck had it, on the 2nd try we passed by this railroad crossing and without seeing or anticipating it, I took the photo just at the right time. She was very happy with it and try as we might, we didn't get any other photo as good as this.

So I will celebrate this World Photography Day with the knowledge that photography is sometimes all about the luck of being in the right place at the right time and pressing the shutter button to capture a moment that will not happen again like that.

Photokina 2014 - Day 2

Cameras everywhere, that's the motto of Photokina and it's great to see and play with some of the cameras.

Since I wasn't that big into new gear but still wanted to spend another day at Photokina, I decided to rent a Fuji XT-1 and see how it works.

It was fun to play around with it but I couldn't see myself using it as it's to big and I didn't warm p to the controls and somewhat slow AF.

Today, I also checked out the Leica booth and while it was fun to see and try the expensive Leica cameras, none was really very exciting in use.

Voigtlander had some cool lenses on display and for the first time I was a bit tempted to add more gear to my collection.

After checking out some accessories, including a very weird camera module made only for the iPhone 5 (something that didn't really made any sense to me), I decided to focus more on taking photos of the visitors and booths.

After returning the Fuji XT-1, I went back to Panasonic to see again the GM-5, which ended up being my personal highlight of Photokina 2014.

Photokina 2014 - Day 1

The 4th year at Photokina certainly felt different, it was still fun but there was less excitement from my part.

Maybe it was because for the first time I was actually quite content with my gear and after traveling with it around the world, I didn't feel like I needed anything new or was missing out on anything.

The most exciting camera for me was the Panasonic GM-5, it is small, looks cool and it's very capable with the m4/3 sensor and interchangeable lenses.

There were some great lenses on display from Zeiss for M mount but I already felt like I had too many lenses as it was.

So overall the first day was fun and it's always great to look at gear but aside from the GM-5 I didn't feel like there was much new for me to see.

Photo-Blogger Abroad

Click on the map for the interactive version.

What do you do if you are a bit fed up with work and the same routine day in, day out? Easy, you quit your job and do something crazy and fun for a while.

This is what I decided a while ago, you might have noticed my blog updates were mostly from Greenwich rather than the City and I dropped hints with my visa applications.

Well, today is my last day in London and tomorrow is the first day of my travels around the world. At least around the world is the plan for now, you can see the map with destinations above.

All going to plan I will visit all of the above places and hope to take not only lots of photos but also blog about it and give you an idea how it is to plan a journey like this.
The journey itself will be done with trains, buses and ferries as much as possible. The itinerary might change from what you see above and on this spreadsheet but this is to be expected on a long journey.
If you live or are somewhere on my route let me know as I am always happy to meet up for drinks and some photography.

If you are curious what I am taking along for the journey, next to a backpack with clothes that is, wonder no more and look below.

Lots of foreign money from previous trips, Fonepad for phone and tablet duties, Microsoft Surface for blogging and writing, Ricoh GR, Ricoh GXR with Heliar 15mm and Jupiter-8 50mm lenses, hard drive for backup, spare batteries and SD cards, travel adapters and cables plus a small travel mouse.

Eagle eyed readers might have noticed the new 'Donate' button in the top right corner, this is if you feel generous and want to donate anything towards the trip or the blog.
Since I don't like taking money without giving anything back, everyone who donates £5 more more will receive the ebook versions of my 'people with umbrellas' and the 'GRD III -  Serious Compact' books. I will also look for other things I can give back to anyone donating.

For an unfiltered view of my photos from the journey you can view my Flickr stream directly from my eye-fi card uploads here.

My Workflow

Since almost everybody who's a photographer and blogger has at some point done a post about their workflow and I got asked about this only recently, here my very simplistic workflow for managing, processing and posting my pictures.

I know a lot of people use Lightroom and swear by it but I don't use it and don't like it's database driven approach, call me old school but I want to access the files directly on the file system. I have tried it a few times but could not make it work for me, I can see why it works great or some people though and understand where the database driven approach is good.

I use Windows on my Surface Pro but have used Windows on my Macbook Pro before that in order to be able to use two, in my view, absolutely fantastic and essential programs.

The first is FastStone and for everyone who grew up with ACD See (before it got slow an bloated), will be instantly familiar with it. It is a very fast photo viewer with the ability to view and edit JPGs and most RAW files very fast (thus the name ;) ) at 100%, batch process (resize, rename, etc.) images and compare pictures. This alone is the reason I used Windows on my old Macbook Pro because I could not find anything that comes near it on OSX (if you know of something please let me know as it might be useful for people using OSX).

The second program I can't live without is RAW Therapee. It is probably the best RAW developer out there and gives great results, especially with Ricoh cameras. It also helps that it is very easy to use and understand, while providing the ability to apply profiles and batch process. A you will see below, I am keeping my processing to a minimum.

The great thing about these programs is that both are free to use, although I have donated to FastStone after using it for years and it being the very first program I install on any computer I use (even if it's not mine ;) ).

After the long introduction, which will probably end longer than the actual workflow content, let me show you my processing steps that I go through 99% of the time when you see 'RAW' written in the EXIF information under a picture.

1. In FastStone, I go to my SD card, browse through the pictures and already delete blurry and crappy shots, because we all take them but don't have to waste space importing them.

2. Once I narrowed my selection down, I compare the JPGs to quickly establish which DNGs (or even the original JPGs) I want to copy to my 'Blog_tmp' folder for further processing and consideration as the picture(s) of the day.

3. Once I copied the pictures for consideration into my 'Blog_tmp' folder, I move everything from the card on my drive into a dedicated folder to back them up and free up space on my card (necessary if your biggest card is 8GB and you use mostly 2GB and 4GB cards like me).

4. I now start RAW Therapee and select the DNGs, I want to process, right click and apply the preferred profile to all photos I want to edit. You can download my profiles for RAW Therapee here (these are what I use but you should use them as a starting point).

5. Should I feel the need to tweak one or more photos, once the profile has been applied, I open them in editing mode and might tweak the contrast, lightness, blacks and exposure compensation. I stay away from most other settings unless I want something specific and feel like spending more time processing (which I usually don't have).

6. If I processed more than one picture, I go through step 2 again in FastStone, otherwise I just resize the picture in FastStone, save it under a different name and post in on my blog.

I know, some might be disappointed as they might have expected more but this is what I do and how I managed to keep my blog updated almost every day since 2008, I like to keep it simple.

If you have any questions or comments post them below, I am also interested to hear what other people use an how they go about processing their photos.

Focus on Imaging 2013

Another year another visit to Focus on Imaging in Birmingham.

What set this year apart from previous years was my complete lack of interest in any new camera, gear or gadgets. It was nice to see the Fuji X100s, the split image manual focus is great and would be perfect with a red peaking overlay and Fuji has really improved the operation, and the X20, the information overlay in the OVF is great and puts other OVFs to shame.
Aside from this there was not much to really see at Focus and it starts to feel like Fuji is the only manufacturer who actually cares about this show or maybe it's also because Canon and Nikon have absolutely nothing remotely interesting for me with their boring dSLRs and very poor mirrorless and compact cameras.
Still, at least Canon and Nikon bothered to show up, Sony, Panasonic and as usual Ricoh did not even do this. Olympus had a small booth dedicated to the OMD which seem to do very well for them and rightly so, it's a great camera and the best m4/3 camera.

This time round it was less of a gear show for me but instead I did have time to take pictures of the models and people around. A 53mm lens is not perfect for this task as you have to get very close but it was still good fun to do and the GXR performed very well and showed why I don't care about any new cameras.

So unlike the previous years no camera talk here and instead pictures so in a way the focus this year was on the actual imaging for me ;). Hope you enjoy this series.

5 Years Later

It all started with a candle and a clock on the day 5 years ago, it was also a Monday but we had no snow then and I knew a lot less about photography or blogging.
This below was the very first picture of my 'Ricoh GR Diary' blog.

When I started this blog I needed something to keep me taking pictures every day rather than just carrying a camera back and forth and never using it. It was always planned as a personal project and I highly doubted anyone but me would even look at it. But a few comments from Wouter and other bloggers later, I realized people were actually looking at my blog.
This made a big difference, for one it inspired me to keep on going even when in doubt or when I did not have enough time but also meant there was more pressure to not just post any picture but a picture I can share with others. Over the years this was at times a very difficult task as some of you who are doing a similar 'photo-a-day' project have experienced.

One of my biggest surprises came while visiting Photokina in September 2008, not only did I get to talk to Ricoh representatives there but they actually knew my blog and were following my impressions of the Ricoh GRD cameras. While meeting them I also first played with the idea to write camera reviews, met Pavel from the Ricohforum and decided to plan our very first Ricohforum meetup and got the invitation to visit the Ricoh factory in China.

A lot has happened in 2008 and this was very motivating, not least meeting some fantastic people from Ricoh, Photographers and Ricoh enthusiasts at the Ricoh meetup and through my blog in HK and Macao. I realised that my blog does matter and it pushed me to keep on going even on days when I was not inspired or had not enough time due to work.

Over the years there have been a few more Ricoh meetups and I have written quite a few reviews of Ricoh cameras, the reviews are always the top posts on my blog when it comes to views and comments which is nice considering the work it takes to write a review although I would prefer to get more views and comments on my pictures ;).

Some of the best things that happened to me through my blog, next to meeting some fantastic people from all over the world, is Ricoh asking me to do a promotional book for the Ricoh GRD III, you can see and order the book here, Ricoh using my pictures to advertise the GRD III in Germany at Foto Koch, me selling some pictures to use for CD covers by Nancee and Clever Stranger, having one of my GRD I pictures chosen for all promotional material for a concert at the Barbican (see picture below) and again to meet some great people through my blog who kept me going.

I have tried to make some changes and even temporarily split the blog into two, one for photos and one for reviews, tried to move it completely to Wordpress and even took a  few short breaks to figure out what to do next, just to end up back where I started. This goes to everything as even my design has not changed much over time. Sometimes keeping things simple is a good idea and so far it has worked well for my blog.

Having said that, there is always time for change and I believe the time has come to make a bigger change this time. I am not completely sure how or what exactly needs changing and most important, when I will have the time to do it but I know a big change is in order and this will be soon.

There are some photography related projects I have in mind and some I had in mind and wanted to do for a while but work usually got in the way so I will try to take the time and get them done this year.

What do you think, what needs changing on my blog and what do you like and would prefer to leave as it is?

And finally in order to keep up with the theme of the blog a picture from today.

GXR A12-M, f8.0, 1/3000, ISO 200, RAW, 42mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)