STILL LIFE 212 – THREE CARS

 

 

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Three parked cars.

Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window and click onto that image to further enlarge it.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 320 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film preset; rotated; Bedminster, Bristol; 8 Nov 2017.
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STILL LIFE 195 – PHOTOS FROM A DRENCHED CAR: 2

 

 

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Photos taken through the streaming windows of my car during a torrential rainstorm – context and further images can be found here.

The upper image is very easy to decipher – assuming that you feel the need when faced with anything at all abstract, to know what you’re looking at – which most people do.  Its a car parked on the other side of the road with its headlights reflecting off the wet tarmac.

The lower image is a little more obscure.  Its a row of houses with – in the lower right hand corner – a woman walking under an umbrella.  Can you see her???

Click onto each image to open a larger version in a separate window.  You can click onto this larger image to enlarge it still further, but these images are very grainy.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; south Bristol; 15 Jan 2018.
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STILL LIFE 189 – PHOTOS FROM A DRENCHED CAR: 1

 

We had a worse than usual weather forecast recently – oodles of rain and wind, maybe with hail, thunder and snow thrown in too – oh joy!  And, leaving the house, I knew that I was going to have to wait around in the car for sometime at some point.  So I popped the TG-5 TOUGH camera into my pocket, just I case.  This little camera is distinctly useful – very handy indeed to carry around, extremely sturdy, waterproof and difficult to damage, and it shoots RAW and has image stabilisation.  The only real minuses for me are the lack of a viewfinder and the fact that the screen is fixed ie non-articulated – but you can’t have everything!  Reviews put it in a class of its own, out in front of other TOUGH cameras.

Anyway,  sure enough, as I sat waiting in my car later in the day, the winds shrieked and the heavens opened.  A deluge clattered across the car’s roof and writhed in torrents down the windows.  And suddenly, looking at those windows, I was encased in a clattering, swirling, flowing and very misty world.  Surreal patterns and images were flowing, forming and re-forming all around me.  I pulled out the TG-5 and started looking into its screen.

Click onto each image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it further.

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The rainstorm, viewed through my car’s windscreen, just after using the wipers: a white car is parked in front of a row of Victorian houses built of honey-coloured Bath Stone.
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The same scene, taken before using the windscreen wipers.  The car is breaking up , becoming ever more abstract, as rainwater pours across the glass.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 3,200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; south Bristol; 15 Jan 2018.
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STILL LIFE 182 – AUTUMN 1

 

 

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Low angle autumn sunlight grazes the surface of the pavement on a steep hill. 

The leaf is from one of the tall Plane trees that line this major route south out of the city.

Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it.

Technique: TG-5 at 74mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Natural film simulation; Wells Road, Bristol; 17 Nov 2017.
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BRISTOL 128 – SILHOUETTE, JUST BEFORE SUNRISE

 

 

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Walking in south Bristol on a frosty morning, with the sun just about to come up.  This silhouette opened up on my left: a building, a tall tree, curling branches – and two gulls, waiting for it to get a little lighter before starting to look for food.

The sun is just about to appear: a tiny contrail just left of the tree’s massive trunk is already lit up.

The first image in this series, along with context, can be found here.  Subsequent images are here: 2 3

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it further.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 2,000 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; south Bristol; 28 Nov 2017.
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BRISTOL 127 – THE SUN BREAKING THROUGH

 

 

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A cold morning, and the rising sun starts to burn through the mists over Whitchurch village, on the southern outskirts of Bristol.

The first image in this series, along with context, can be found here.  Subsequent images are here: 2   .

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it yet again.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 320 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; Whitchurch, south Bristol; 2 Nov 2017.
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TALKING IMAGES 34 – OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-5 CAMERA: REVIEW

 

 

Photo credit: TrustedReviews

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I’ve been using the Olympus Tough TG-5 camera for just over a month and am generally impressed.  Some recent pictures that I’ve taken with the camera can be found here,  here, here, and here .  Click onto them and each will open in a separate window. 

This is not an full review, but here are some impressions I’ve gained:

• As shown in the picture above, its small, light, robust, and slips easily into my trouser pocket.  Physically its very much a take anywhere camera, and then on top of that there are its waterproof, freezeproof, crushproof and shockproof properties – so really, you don’t have to worry too much about it!  My black camera shipped with a bright red wrist strap that did not make a good first impression(!), but I’ve fitted it to the camera and actually it is useful.  As you can see above, this is a small camera, and even though I don’t have very big hands, this strap comes in very useful.

• The TG-5 shoots 12MP raw files and produces attractive images: I’m currently processing them with Lightroom Classic CC, which has Olympus film simulation modes.  One strange thing about the TG-5 – which apparently also occurs in other Olympus cameras – is that it inserts OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA in the caption field of the Exif data – so that, if I don’t remove this in Lightroom, it appears in the photos that I post on this blog.  Very strange!

• Being an Olympus, the TG-5 has a whole suite of Picture Modes that alter the look of images but, for the moment at least, I’m sticking with Mode 3, which is Natural.

• It has a very handy zoom range, which is 25mm-100mm in 35mm full frame equivalents.  There is image stabilisation, but this doesn’t work with the camera’s Pro Capture mode, which I thus avoid.  Anti-shake is always a top thing with me.

• The autofocus is fast and accurate, even in low light, which is also a very important thing for me.

• It has a good screen, to which I’ve added some helpful gridlines – but I really prefer cameras with viewfinders – still, beggars can’t be choosers in this case and I’m quickly getting more used to using the screen.  Many think that a photo should be made perfect in the camera, so that no (or minimal) post-processing is necessary – as we did with colour slide (transparency) film in the past.  However, another article that I read recently suggested shooting Raw and only getting the exposure right in-camera, with all else being attended to in post-processing, and I like this approach.  To get maximum flexibility in post-processing, Raw is by far the best file type to shoot.  And if you’re trying to get the exposure right in camera, then its extremely useful to have the exposure live histogram visible in the camera’s viewfinder or screen – to be warned of featureless blacks (underexposure) and whites (overexposure), and to help push the exposure to the right – and the TG-5’s screen can be configured to show the histogram.  To find out more about “exposing to the right”, click here .

• I’ve turned off all sounds, so the camera is perfectly silent.  I’ve noticed that the TG-5’s small size draws less attention from people than my far larger Nikons, and even the Fujifilm X-T cameras.  And my camera is black, not the blazing red shown above – although this bright colour would make the camera easier to find if it were dropped anywhere, especially underwater.

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• This is a Raw shot, taken around dawn, at the TG-5’s 12,800 maximum ISO. The shutter speed was 1/100, which was sufficient to just about freeze the bird, and the long (100mm) end of the zoom was wide open at f4.9 . I’ve processed this in Lightroom, one of the main objectives being to reduce the grain, but I’m not expert at that – click onto this image, twice, to see what I mean!  Such images may well look better in black and white.  But taking into account this camera’s very small sensor (about 6mm x 4.5mm), this is not bad and, in any case, if I get to use this camera as I plan to – in pouring rain and probably poor light – I’m not going to be going after photographically perfect results, I’m going to be after atmosphere, bags of atmosphere >>>>> what it was like being there! (which may well equate to: Not very enjoyable … really … ! )

• Pressing the OK button on the camera’s back brings up quick menus for many useful shooting parameters – I keep it on ISO so that I can change that quickly.  The camera has Auto ISO, but I’ve yet to find a camera where I’m totally happy with the way that works.  There are also very quick ways of accessing shooting mode, flash mode and exposure adjustment, set around the OK button.

• The manual that accompanies this camera couldn’t be any more basic without being non-existent, so I’ve printed off the full length version from the .pdf here.  There’s no point trying to economise here if the camera is really going to be useful – and in any case I like paper copies of such things that I can read in my armchair and scrawl comments and annotations on (in red biro, of course!).

• Wonderfully, pressing the INFO button while the camera is switched off brings up a very useable, illuminated compass – really quite a useful item in any environment – and there are also the possibilities of recording altitude, temperature, atmospheric pressure and GPS data.

• An interesting point that I read somewhere is that although this camera has varying apertures which obviously can be used to get the correct exposure for photos, these apertures will NOT affect the photos’ depth of field (focus) – but then the small size of this camera’s sensor is going to give large depths of field anyway – I don’t think this is going to be a camera for giving nice hazy bokeh background unless used at very close distances.

• Anything else?  Oh yes, the TG-5 also offers 4K movie recording, if that rocks your boat.  Also, this being an Olympus, there are many shooting modes too, including underwater and microscope.

• Should you have any questions about the TG-5, please don’t hesitate to ask me.  I’m by no means an expert with this camera, but I’ll do my best.  The camera’s manual (see the link to the manual, above) is also a good source of reference.

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STILL LIFE 168 – FROSTY MORNING, MELTING

 

 

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After a cold night, still icy in the shadows.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: TG-5 at 70mm (equiv); 160 ISO; Lightroom, using the Camera Vivid film simulation; Hart’s Bakery, Temple Meads, Bristol; 8 Nov 2017.
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PEOPLE 299 – GOING TO WORK 35

 

 

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All my pictures of Bristol’s morning rush hour have been taken in the city centre.  But here is something different, here is “rush hour” out in the sticks, out on the city’s edge.  To be sure there are still houses around, both to the left and to the right of this shot, but there are also trees and broad grass verges, and back behind the bus shelter are open fields with sheep and cattle. The sunrise of a clear, frosty morning is blazing in across that open farmland.

Two people wait for the morning bus to work, perhaps enjoying the bright (but still cold) sun, but for sure deeply engaged with their mobile devices.  Through the bus shelter’s icy windows we see only their engrossed shadows.

Earlier images from this series can be found here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,  29, 30,  31,  32, 33  34  . Each will open in a separate window.

Click onto the image to open another version in a separate window, and click onto that image to enlarge it.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom; Capture NX2; south Bristol; 8 Nov 2017.
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PEOPLE 298 – WALKING TO SCHOOL

 

 

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The road to learning, through restful autumn mists and the anything but restful morning rush hour.  I was a young schoolboy like him rather more than 50 years ago.  Our family had one car, which my father used for work – which left mum and I without transport, and anyway mum never learned to drive.  And so to a long, solitary bus ride back and fore to school each day – which was fine, and which was what many kids did in those days, especially those coming in from the surrounding countryside.

Times have changed, and now many children – on occasion even into their mid teens – are taken to school by car, the infamous, twice daily, “school run”.  That young people can face dangers from elements within our society is beyond question – I’ve worked in children’s social services, I should know.  But the problem is that totally shielding them from every real and imagined threat leaves them less prepared – maybe less streetwise says it – for the days when, sooner or later, they will need to be looking out, at least in part, for their own safety and welfare.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 400 ISO; Lightroom; south Bristol; 2 Nov 2017.
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