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Day 195: Chelmer in Spring

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

It was a beautiful spring day today, I think this is my favourite photograph I took today.

Day 194: Smile

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph of a smile today.”

Slightly cheating again today, but I didn’t want to do another self-portrait. I bank with Smile, as you can see, and the logo has a picture of a smile on it. Apologies for the dust etc…

Day 193: My Desk

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a low contrast photo today. Concentrate on other cues—such as line and texture—to create your photograph.”

Unfortunately I didn’t really manage with the line, but I think the texture of the desk hasn’t come out too badly.

I’ve had my nice new Sony NEX-5 camera for about three months now. I’ve been wanting to write a review of it for ages, but I just haven’t had the time! Anyway I thought this would be as good a time as ever to jot down a few thoughts about it.

Before I start I should note: there are plenty of other reviews which go into the NEX-5 in much more detail than this! Really what I want to do is give the perspective of someone like me: someone who enjoys taking photos but is never going to be a professional, and someone who has just moved up from a compact digital camera.

Obviously this isn’t going to be a comprehensive review, but it might be helpful if you’re considering upgrading from a compact and (like me) you’re just an amateur! Also, my friend Alex bought a Canon EOS 400D Digital at about the same time, so if I refer to his camera that’s what I’m talking about.

Firstly then, the pros:

• Picture quality is fantastic. Well, judge for yourself: take a look at my Flickr stream, and see what you think of the photos I’ve taken on the new camera. The first photos in my Project 365 set are taken with the old camera, the newer photos are all taken with the new camera. There’s simply a huge difference in quality – the colours, the sharpness, there’s just generally more nuance in the pictures. Of course you’d expect that with an SLR camera, but it’s worth making the point nonetheless.
• The camera software is easy to use, when you get used to it. I’ve not had any problems with mine, especially when coming up from a compact – you have different settings for different scenes (such as landscapes, sunsets etc), but you can also go fully manual or basically let the camera take as much or as little of the strain as you want.
• The screen is nice and big, which I find really helpful. It’s also adjustable in that you can make it face down or up, which is very handy when you want to take a photo of something low down or high up. I’ve used this feature several times, it’s much more handy than you might think at first.
• It has a help menu there to guide you through most of the settings on the camera. Again, if you’re coming up from a compact this is useful – just for learning your way around the camera and finding out what different settings do.
• I bought the kit that came with two lenses – a zoom lens and a fixed focal length pancake lens. The pancake lens I don’t use that much (I need to be more creative with this – there are a number of situations where a wide angle lens is more useful), but the zoom lens is handy. One thing which I found after coming up from a compact is that I use the zoom much more: on our old compact, it didn’t have stabilisation which meant that if you zoomed in, the picture would *always* look blurry. On the new camera, I think it has optical stabilisation in the lens which means you can zoom in to the maximum zoom and still get the same quality pictures. So although the lens is only 3x zoom, I use it a lot more than I would use the zoom on our old camera.
• This is more of a personal one, but – despite feeling solid and well-built, the camera is small and you can carry it round easily. This is particularly noticeable when compared with Alex’s camera – although he has an extension pack and a variety of accessories he often carries around so it’s not completely a fair comparison. But in general I can carry the camera with both lenses in a small carry case, which I think is perfect for taking project 365 photos (I can take it round and about with me without it getting in the way).
• Battery life is pretty good – I was told in the shop it lasted for around 300 shots, although I think that might be an underestimate – I only have to charge the battery once every couple of weeks (not that I take loads of pictures).

That all said, the camera is not perfect! Here are the cons, as I see them:

• It does take about a second to turn on. Now, that’s that’s not at all a big problem, but at the same time it might be an issue if you’re the kind of person who likes to take lots of quick shots.
• The settings menu isn’t the quickest thing in the world. On Alex’s camera, all the settings are pretty much there and ready to access. On the NEX-5 they’re all buried within a menu system. Now it’s not like it takes much longer to change, for example, the ISO setting – but it’s just something to bear in mind. You can set up shortcuts to an extent, but if you like to constantly be fiddling with settings this may not be the camera for you.
• This point is really not so much a problem with the camera in and of itself, but a problem when compared with cameras from other manufacturers: the mount for the NEX-5 is new, so there aren’t many lenses Contrast that to a Canon camera, where you can buy a lens and have it fit pretty much any camera they manufacture. That’s a real advantage. It means when you upgrade your camera, you don’t have to throw away all your old lenses. Apart from all this, I think Alex’s camera has a whole lot more accessories for it than the NEX-5 does, little things such as an expansion pack which can hold an additional battery and so on. My impression is really that the Canon is more of a “photographer’s camera” than the NEX-5.

My overall verdict? It’s a great camera, no doubt about it. I don’t regret buying it, and I think it doesn’t restrict my “creative freedom” in any way (if anything, it helps it). But – all that said, I think if I was going to buy another camera I probably wouldn’t go with something like this. If you’re looking into upgrading a compact camera at the moment, it’s definitely worth investigating this camera – but at the same time, do be aware that it’s not perfect and if you want to get more seriously into photography than me you might want something a little more heavy duty!

Day 192: Amusing – Mark Watson

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

The Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph of something that you find amusing today.”

Well, there wasn’t much amusing outside today, but one thing I do find amusing is the comedian Mark Watson: he’s very funny. This is a CD of his radio series, “Mark Watson makes the world substantially better” (if you haven’t heard it, I do recommend it).

It’s probably not the greatest photo I’ve ever taken but I do quite like the colours 🙂

On Twitter recently, Simon wrote:

I find it fascinating how whenever someone writes something about Apple products 100s of people comment, many saying how rubbish they are.
…
It’s amazing how 33% of the internet think Apple products are amazing, 33% rubbish and the other 33% couldn’t care less.
…
I don’t know of any other company that polarises opinion so much. It’s truly fascinating to watch!

This is a subject which I’ve been thinking about recently. I’m no fan of Apple, but I do have an iPod (it was the cheapest thing available which had the amount of storage space it did. Everything else was flash-memory based. I don’t use iTunes to sync it – I use Winamp and the iPod plugin).

So… what is it about Apple products that makes them so hated by some, and so loved by others? I know plenty of digital ink has been spilled on this already, but that’s absolutely no reason why I can’t weight in on it too. I am somewhat towards the “hate” side of the debate, by the way – I’ll say that upfront. But I do recognise some of the strengths of Apple products too, and I’m going to try and sum all that up here.

Why people like, and indeed, LOVE Apple products:

• They are exceptionally well-designed. For the most part. The software “just works”, the casing looks attractive, the UI is smooth – all these things are generally true. Apart from ‘Antennagate’ last year (I’ll come to that in a minute), as far as I know Apple products are generally well built.
• They give users an end-to-end experience. What I mean by that is they don’t just provide you with a piece of hardware, and maybe some crappy software which can sync it (badly) with your computer – when you buy an Apple device you’re buying into a whole ecosystem.
• As such, Apple have a great deal of control over that ecosystem. Now in some respects this is a good thing. They don’t need to worry about trying to make software run on loads of diverse hardware platforms. They can veto apps which aren’t of good enough quality. They can ensure everything meets their standards.

OK, so those are the main pros I can think of. Let’s look at the other side though, starting with what I think is the real reason people “hate” Apple.

• Apple products are hyped so much, you could be forgiven for thinking that the arrival of a new Apple product was akin to the rapture. The Register started calling the iPhone the “Jesus Phone” before it was released. It’s not that Apple products are bad – it’s just that, at the end of the day, they are in fact products and not a cure for cancer / fount of eternal youth.
• I think Apple devices are a bit of a fashion statement, somewhat deservedly – but a lot of people hate “fashion” passionately. That’s a whole other discussion though.
• Following on from the first point, I do kind of get the feeling that Steve Jobs creates a ‘reality distortion field’ (as The Register call it), in which nothing can be ever wrong with an Apple product. For example, with Antennagate last year, lots of people had to complain – pretty stridently – before Apple would even acknowledge there *might* be a problem.
• Steve Jobs is a visionary, but at the same time he’s … well, he’s not always the best person for dealing with people. My favourite example of his PR skills is this one. Now this isn’t really a reason to dislike Apple per se, but it doesn’t exactly endear the company to me.
• I also don’t like the way Apple treats developers, and the way they are creating a ‘Walled Garden’ with iTunes and their platform in general.

That last point – well, all of them really – could be expanded upon.

So, as you can see, I’m not really a fan of Apple, although I do recognise that they do some things well. Is that an acceptable position to have? I don’t rant about them, but at the same time I’m not indifferent.

Day 191: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

The Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph that features a shadow as your subject today.”

Well, I’ve bent the rules slightly and gone with a variety of shadows. I love the effect the lamplight creates here – very atmospheric, it’s bright and yet somehow the whole area is shrouded in shadows.

I wish I’d actually had the music for ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, but some Chopin will have to do.

Day 190: Guitar

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

Daily Shoot assignment: “What kind of other art do you appreciate? Make a photograph that celebrates it today.”

After thinking about this for a while I eventually settled on a picture of a guitar. There are two reasons for this:

1. I love music as an artform. I’m not sure if that’s the ‘art’ that the assignment refers to but there you go.

2. I think the Stratocaster is a classic guitar design, and a fine example of design in general. I think good design is art, and a stratocaster guitar counts!

In terms of the photo the only thing that annoys me is the great big “Classic Vibe” sticker, but I decided to leave it there because it would have probably looked worse if I’d taken it off.

This weekend was the Chappel Winter Beer Festival (as you may have guessed from my cunning usage of those exact same words in the title of this post). On Friday night, as it was half term we didn’t have 21 for once! It’s not that I don’t enjoy doing 21 but it’s nice to have the evening off from time to time. So, we stayed in, and Alex and Laura joined us. We had dinner and then Laura had to head off, but Anne-Marie joined us to chat for an hour or two.

On Saturday morning we went out for a mile jog (Alex’s idea, but I felt good afterwards), and then we headed down to the station to get the train down to Chappel & Wakes Colne railway station. We got to the beer festival shortly after 11AM, and despite the miserable weather the atmosphere inside was good!

I think the day can be summarised by the following words: beer, pasty, pies, cheese, random, conversation. Not much more I can say apart from that! We got the 4:40 train back home (the session we were at was 11AM – 5PM), and we walked back home from Colchester station, stopping to take a few pictures of the beautiful sunset.

In the evening we had a curry at the Ashiana, which was nice although I couldn’t finish all of mine! – and then headed back home to watch Toy Story 3. Phil and I hadn’t seen it before, and it was really good. We were saying afterwards, a lot of trilogies tail off in the second or third films. Toy Story doesn’t – it keeps the standard consistently high throughout all of them. We really enjoyed it and I would definitely say it was worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, before coming back home and having a nice walk around Castle Park to take a few photos of the fast-approaching spring. Then we had lunch and Alex headed off, we went to Sunday@6, and then came back home and watched Top Gear. So there you have it! That was our weekend. It was a really nice weekend, although I feel quite tired at the moment. Still, we don’t have all that much on this week so that’s good.

Day 188: Speaker

Originally uploaded by phillsacre

Daily Shoot: ‘Make a photograph illustrating a sound that catches your ear today.’

I didn’t really get much of a chance to get out and about much today due to the weather, but I did listen to some musiuc.

This is a photo of a hi-fi speaker, which sounds very good – unfortunately I never get to turn it up as loud as I want to, but still. C’est la vie!