Came across an interesting article on Rob Galbraith about Alex Majoli. Alex is a photojournalist that uses point and shoot digital cameras instead of large DSLRs, and has won several awards for his work. Makes you think - especially as I’m about to renew my insurance for my camera gear which has a value more than 3 times what I paid for my car! (Admittedly, it’s a rather cheap car…) Anyway, I’d never really considered the depth of field argument - it’s usually something I want to limit - but then there are other times when I just can’t get enough given the light etc.

I’ve been hunting around for a good point and shoot for a couple of years now, and am wondering if the new cameras from Panasonic will finally do the job. I want a wide angle lens, good low light operation (so high, noise-free-ish ISO rating), with good quality lens. The Ricoh GR Digital looked good, but at 400 quid is rather over the top. It’ll be interesting to see what the reviews of these new Panasonics say when they finally hit the streets.

Tags: photography, photojournalism, photojournalist, point and shoot, ricoh, panasonic

IMG_1538, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

Went for a stroll in the Cheddar George (in Somerset) on Sunday and spotted this Darter. Really need to start carying a tripod with me (or at least a monopod), but it was so hot, and I was a tad hung over. I just couldn’t face it!

The colours seem a bit dull on this screen since I converted it to JPEG. Really need to sort out my colour profiles and things.

Tags: dragon fly, photo, macro, somerset

IMG_1323, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

So here’s a nice picture for you.

Got my LaCie 319 yesterday, so managed to get it plugged in last night when I got back from the Go Kart track and pub….

The good news is the screen works, and I couldn’t spot any dead pixels. The colour as it stands looks good too, and text on the screen is nice and sharp.

The bad news is the colorimeter that came with it (a LaCie blue eye pro) was broken in two pieces, so that has to get returned (once I proven to LaCie that it is indeed broken). This is a bit of a pain as I have a batch of photos to process from a friends wedding this weekend, and I was rather hoping to have my screen all setup and ready to go.

So not too chuffed.

The good thing is that I’ve given my desk a bit if a tidy (still a long way to go though), and getting rid of my old Dell 19″ CRT has freed up a lot of well-needed space.
Yay!

Tags: lacie

Well I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered my first TFT display - a Lacie 319. On the face of it it’s not the best specification in the world (only 1280×1024 screen resolution and not that bright), but if you dig a bit deeper you’ll see it offers a CRT-grade color gamut which I’m hoping will actually be as good as it sounds.

The screen comes with a colour calibrator and a hood too, so the theory is I should be able to get good colour rendition in my images. Anyway, if this works well I may think about getting a higher resolution 20″ one in a few months

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IMG_0957, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

Took a trip over to the pond at Friday Street in Surrey. I was hoping to get some pictures of dragon flies and things like that, but they were generally to far away for me to get a good close up. I took the ’scenic’ route back to the car and stumbled across some ferns with the sun behind then. The wind was blowing so I had to use a quick shutter speed — meaning less depth of field than I’d have liked. Still, I quite liked the result.

Tags: photos, ferns, surrey

Denbies Vineyard, uploaded by marky moo.

Although working in the middle of nowhere can be a bit quiet at times, it does give me some great opportunities. How many people can walk to a vineyard in their lunch break, have a nice cold glass of wine, then get back to the office in the space of an hour?!

For those that don’t know, Denbies is the largest vineyard in the UK, and they make some jolly nice wine!

Tags: vineyard, denbies

I’ve just released version 1.1 of FlickrViewer. (I didn’t find any bugs in 1.0 beta so there was never a 1.0 release.) Download it here.

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