New camera for Glastonbury

I’ve just got back from Glastonbury and have finally got rid of all the mud in what’s left of my hair.

Before I went, I bought a new camera to take with me, a Panasonic LX5. Now, I’m not normally a techie kind of bloke; I don’t sit around discussing f-stops and lenses and resolution. The last time I was asked how many megapixels one of my Nikons had, I had no idea. I still don’t.

However, this camera has impressed me like no other, so I’m going to write a little bit about why, and show you some examples of stuff I shot at Glastonbury with it.

The last pocket camera I had was a Ricoh GX100, which I ended up hating. Sometimes it just refused to take a picture for no real reason. The flash was utterly inconsistent, the colours were weak and the digital noise was crazy. If that’s tempted you, it’s going on eBay next week. I think I might re-word the sales pitch though.

So, I got the Panasonic. Google told me that this is actually the exact same camera as the Leica D-Lux 5, with one minor difference and one major difference. The minor one is that the Panasonic has a slightly different shape to the body, with a curved handgrip in front. No big deal. The major difference is the price. The Panasonic retails for about £450. The Leica, however, is about £200 more. That’s a lot of money to pay for a nice little red badge.

Before I went off to the mudfest in Somerset, I spent a week or so playing around with it, just testing as many options as possible. I wanted to be really familiar with it, so that I would be able to react quickly.

I realise that for many people, the word Glastonbury is the very definition of hell on earth, but myself and my family love it, even when it's wet and muddy. I wanted good pictures, but if I wasn't actually working, I didn't want to lug around my Nikons. This Panasonic appeared to be the perfect compromise.

I need a pocket camera that can do several things. It must be able to shoot RAW files, it must have a manual setting and an accurate flash. I need it to feel solid and I need the digital noise to be minimal. This camera does that and loads more stuff, all too technical and dull to go into.

I’m going to shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves. Now, these were all shot in the RAW format and there has been some post-processing; they didn’t just pop out of the camera looking this way. But they are an accurate representation of what I saw at the time and this brilliant camera was able to deliver the goods. I am a happy customer.

P.S. I shot them all in the 16:9 format as I like this shape. It's especially good for audio slideshows on a widescreen TV.

 

 

I have included the last two to show just how well the camera can cope with low-light levels. Both were shot at ISO800. The one of the chap in the hat was shot in almost pitch darkness, balancing the camera on my knees for a quarter of a second. 

Audio Slideshow or Photofilm?

Hello everyone

I recently completed a little film I've been planning for a while. I've been planning to make this kind of thing for a while, but I never had the right subject matter until recently.

Some places on the web call them Audio Slideshows and others call them Photofilms. When I was at college, back in the time of pre-history, we called them Audio-visual displays. They used slides and projectors and it was all a bit clunky. People actually used to study how to make them. For two years!

I've been intrigued by the idea of these movies for a while now, ever since I first saw examples of them on a cool website called Duck Rabbit. I particularly like the ones called "Fairground Attraction" and "Imber". Check them out.

Anyway, I was invited to take some pictures of a sculptor called David Nash. There was no fee involved and no commission either, but I was hoping there would be the potential to make some kind of feature. The first set of pictures were great, and I realised this would be just the thing for a film, but I needed a proper soundtrack.

I went back to show David the pictures and record his thoughts on a sound recorder as he looked through them. Then I made a few ambient recordings of wood burning and birds singing in the trees and so on.

I came home and edited the sound and pictures down to a manageable 4 minutes. There's a brilliant free sound editing program called Audacity you can download to do this with. I made the actual 'film' using iMovie, only available on the Mac, but I'm sure you could do it just as well with QuickTime or something like that.

I'm still not sure if there are any commercial avenues open with this kind of thing. The BBC uses them on their site, as do The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, all to great effect. Getting paid for them, however, is a different challenge altogether. I was unable to persuade anyone at all to give me any money for my efforts :-(

Let me know what you think....leave comments, click on the 'like' button, knock yourselves out.

Hmm, that's smaller than I would have hoped for, and I can't figure out how to make it bigger. Have a look on my website for a more normally-sized one.....but leave any comments here.

Until the next time!

Judith celebrates!

Hi everyone

Judith Ricketts has had her first set of pictures published, so a massive well done to her for that. That first one can be the toughest. Mind you, the second one........

Still, that's not the point. The point is, she found out about an event, got out there and shot it and then submitted her work to outside scrutiny. And that's one of the hardest things.

Thankfully, the pictures were good enough to be used on the website The Kemptown Rag and I'm sure that seeing them online and in context was a real buzz. It's a good feeling and one that you could easily develop a taste for.

A big round of applause please, ladies and gentlemen!

If you want to see the pictures on the actual website, here's the link.