Morocco Photo 2

Morocco Chilling

Morocco

Spent a weekend in Morocco and took a million photos, will slowly upload the best ones.

Photoshop Skills

Messing around on Photoshop I merged three photographs to create my own image which I think has worked quite well, let me know what you think, cheers.

Photoshop skills

Canon 60D Macro Tubes

A couple of weeks back I bought a set of macro tubes for my 60D from Amazon at a ridiculously low price. Paying so little I really didn't expect much but I've fallen in love with this cheap and simple addition to my kit. The general principle behind macro tubes is, by moving the lens further away from the camera's sensor you can greatly reduce the minimum focal distance capable by that lens. The tubes fit to my camera easily and support both my kit lenses with no problems, it goes with out saying just be careful with heavier lenses. When shooting with tubes you need quite a lot of light to work with but handheld shots are attainable outside on a sunny day or with the help of additional lights when shooting indoors. For interior shots though I would certainly recommend a tripod and a shutter release button (also available for a few quid on Amazon) for best results. 

The biggest challenge when using macro tubes is getting your point of interest in focus as your depth of field range is reduced to literally a centimetre of miniature sharpness. I know what you're thinking to increase the depth of field can you not just simply close the aperture on the lens? Yeah it does help but unless you have aperture controls on your lens we run into another problem as the macro tube is separating the lens from the camera and every time you disconnect your lens it resets to a wide setting. Through some online research I did discover a way to stop this lens resetting on the 60D by disconnecting the lens whilst holding down the unmarked button (actually Depth Of Field preview button) found just below and to the left of your lens mount. Obviously closing the aperture will mean you need even more light and this is when a tripod becomes a necessity.

Hand held Wasp in the Garden

Hand held Spider in the garden

Hand held Ladybird in the Garden

Tripod and additional light, Shelley's Eye

Tripod and natural light from window, Scratch Card

Tripod and natural light from window, Charm (for Ebay)

Macro Tubes on Amazon

Thanks for checking out my blog and please let me know what you think in a comment. 

Humber Bridge HDR and random Raw photos taken on the Canon 60D

A few HDR photos of the Humber Bridge which is just a couple of miles down the road from me plus a couple of photos edited on Photoshop's Camera Raw program.

Humber Bridge HDR

Humber Bridge HDR

Humber Bridge HDR

Seagull RAW

Me and my bird Shelley's cat Socks

Factory - Canon 60D HDR and RAW Photography

The weather wasn't too bad today so I decided to go for a random drive with my camera and tripod sat shotgun. I ended up at a spot we call circles which I hadn't been to in a while. A few years back me and some friends tried to skate around here and it's always been one of those places you could go shooting your air rifle with no bother, made cooler by the post apocalyptic feel of the place. Good times for borderline rebellious kids who where too nice to actually piss anyone off. Anyway here's the first few photos which I've had time to process, probably will add a few more over the next few days.

The Tower

HDR view from the Tower

Partially desaturated HDR view from the Tower

Between the two HDR images which do you prefer? Feedback is greatly appreciated.

Take it easy, Chris

Canon 60D HDR Attempt

This is my first attempt as making an HDR image, which is basically an image made up of several photos taken at the same time at different exposures to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) I'm fairly impressed with the outcome for a first try and I will certainly be trying this technique again. The picture was taken in my garden using a Canon 60D on a Manfrotto tripod, uploaded and converted using DPP and then edited using Photoshop CS5. Let me know what you think.

My Garden - Canon 60D HDR 

60D Photo of the day

I recently bought a Canon 60D DSLR camera and thought I might start a series of blog posts showing photographs which I am especially happy about taking. This is a photograph taken of one of my family's many Pygmy Marmosets and I like the composition and layers in the shot. I've messed around with the levels a little bit on Photoshop to make the image more dramatic. 

Pygmy Marmoset

A few weeks after making this post I decided to have another go at the post processing on this picture and here is the result, which I think is an improvement.

Pygmy Marmoset

Holidays with my N8

This Summer I have been lucky enough to get away to three different countries: Majorca with my Dad, Portugal with my Mum and my favourite Rhodes with my beautiful girlfriend Shelley (link to her blog). This year I decided not to take my usual and now dated fixed lens semi-pro camera (Samsung Pro815) instead opting to just use the camera on my Nokia N8 mobile phone. To most photographers this may sound absurd but trust me the quality of the images from the the 12MP Carl Zeiss lensed phone camera matched those of my old big camera. Obviously I would miss the manual focus ring but overall I decided the disadvantages did not justify lugging my camera about. If the holidays had been more photography related rather than family and romantic it might have been different. A few months back I bought a set of glass lenses for my phone camera which stay with me on my keyring at all times (macro, wide and fish-eye) and I have downloaded a phone application giving me more control over the cameras settings so I do have more manual control than one might expect from a phone camera. An impressive feature of the Nokia N8 is its ability to film in HD with surprisingly good results, to have a camera which catches usable quality footage in one's pocket at all times is a blessing for anyone interested in cinematography. Here are some examples of images and a video taken from the N8 on my holidays.

My Dad Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliott

Devilfish on a bike ride

Me and two of my Brothers

One of my nieces

Another niece

Shelley's cat

Me and Shelley

Lizard I caught in Rhodes

Here is a short edit I made from some footage taken in Rhodes

My pet Pygmy Marmosets