London Marathon 2013

Another great day in London with sunshine and mild temperatures, almost perfect for the 2013 London Marathon to take place although the runners would have probably preferred it a bit cooler.

I got up early in the morning, packed my GXR with Heliar 15mm, Jupiter-8 50mm and Leica Elmar 90mm lenses and set out to take pictures of the marathon. I took the Heliar with me because I had some specific pictures in mind I wanted to take with t and the Elmar to try and use a longer focal length and see how I would get on with. For most part I got on well but I had a bad manual focus day so got quite a lot of out of focus pictures due to me not paying attention to the distance markings or the screen.

Here a slightly longer series with some of the pictures I like best, I also tried to keep it varied so hopefully it's not too repetitive.

Reading Half Marathon

A small series from a rain soaked half marathon in Reading, I was not running but taking pictures and supporting the runners but got quite soaked anyway.
The pictures are all taken with the Jupiter-8 lens aside from the first one I took with the Jupiter-12 so it was a Russian lens day.

Also a happy St. Patrick's day to everyone with the last picture!

London Marathon 2012

As with every year some pictures from the London Marathon, not my best year in terms of quality and I also got out a bit later so missed the main action.
Took all with the GXR A12-M, Jupiter-8 and Leica Elmar 90mm lenses.

London Marathon 2011

Today's series is presented slightly different and my attempt to find a better way to display a series of pictures. Initially I wanted to cut the series down to 10 or 5 pictures but I find that this always takes up too much space on the front page of my blog so I decided to try the flickr slideshow viewer and see how it works.
So let me know what you think of this.

This year for the London Marathon I decided to leave the trusty LC1 at home and take with me the GF1 with the 20mm pancake for it's fast AF and my 50mm Canon FD lens for the longer reach and easier MF operation. After starting to use the pancake lens with AF, I quickly gave up and switched to the Canon MF lens since it was a lot faster to use and it delivered better image quality with more character. I tried the pancake lens later on and even tried to use it in MF-mode but without a distace scale it was pretty useless. In the end I did not really like most of the pictures from it so ended up deleting most of the pictures while keeping almost all from the 50mm FD lens.

After today's experience I am more tempted than ever to sell this lens as well as the Olympus m4/3 kit-lens I have since they don't have any character and I just don't like the pictures from either. I will have to do a proper comparison to see the difference clearer.

London Marathon 2010

A small series of this year's Virgin London Marathon 2010. All pictures are taken with the Panasonic LC1, my favorite camera for these events despite the very slow AF.

Race for Life 09 in Blackheath

This is a early blog update for me but after getting back from the 'Race for Life' event in Blackheath I think I found the 5 pictures I want to use for today.
I decided to use the Panasonic LC1, it has the zoom and color pictures are just great from it. I am highly impressed with the quality from the LC1, it has a fantastic lens but more than that, the sensor is very good. I believe 2/3" (or slightly bigger) and 6-8MP is the best size for a compact digital camera, it gives enough dynamic rage, very nice colors and does not have too much noise.

London Marathon 2009

Got up early today to go on an assignment and take pictures of the 2009 Flora London Marathon. It was an event by the LPMG and Bliss to take pictures of the official bliss runners. Although they announced rain for today, the weather has been fantastic and great for being out and taking pictures although the harsh light posed a problem at times.

I decided to take the Panasonic LC1 with me since it has a very usefull zoom, fast lens, handles very well and the dynamic range is very good. Everyone else had big dSLRs with long zoom lenses so my 90mm tele was where their zoom lenses started. My choice of cameras did stick out but at least I did not have to worry about a sore neck at the end of the day ;).
The only problem with my choice of camera is the slow and unreliable AF and the EVF lag of the LC1, I had to resort to manual focus at times and using one eye to frame through the EVF and the other to see the actual scene, this worked ok although the EVF is not 1:1. It is really a shame Panasonic never released a LC2 based on a 4/3 sensor and faster AF, a G1 in a LC1 body would be a fantastic camera and a bit like a digital Contax G2. I think the most important thing in a new camera for me is a fast and reliable AF, using manual focus is ok but I would not want to rely on it all the time.

Since I never go out of the house without one of my GRDs, I also had the GRD I with me for street shots while walking around. It did give me some very nice shots but also a few problems that I need to look into.

You can see more pictures from the marathon in my Dropbox gallery here.

Moore Challenge

LC1, f5, 1/1000, ISO 100, RAW, 90mm

LC1, f4.5, 1/1000, ISO 100, RAW, 90mm

LC1, f4, 1/1000, ISO 100, RAW, 90mm

First day in the new flat and the t-mobile HSDPA reception is pretty bad (or almost not existent). There is no way I can keep updating the blog on time or I need to go outside. Ah well, hope it won't be too long till the broadband is installed.
Aside from this and the unpacking of boxes there was also the Cancer Research marathon in Blackheath. Good opportunity for taking the LC1 out. It performed very well in manual focus, auto focus is still too slow and the EVF has a lag. Once getting used to this it works a lot better and manual focus is very easy and fast to use.
I only caught the end of the marathon and while I took quite a lot of pictures, these are my 3 favorite pictures.