Cheap visit to the garage

by Ian Posted on January 31, 2008

Just before Christmas, I had problems with my car’s brakes, which meant an expensive visit to the garage. Last weekend I noticed that I could hear a rubbing sound from the left side of the car that varied with its speed. I arranged for the garage to look at it today. I half expected to have to argue that something must not have been fitted properly when they had it last.

I rang up this afternoon for an update, expecting to hear a catalogue of things that were wrong, only to be pleasantly surprised to be told that my car was on its way back. It turns out that there was a small build up of rust on the back of the rear brake disc that was rubbing on the brake disc.

It must be the only time I’ve had work done on a car for nothing.

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Photo Assignment

by Ian Posted on January 29, 2008

candlesFor the last few months, the cre8Buzz photography community have been running a monthly photography assignment. I borrowed Jo’s camera and entered the November assignment, which was food, with my cheese and crackers photo. I wasn’t overly happy with this shot and didn’t get time to enter the December one.

candlesAnyway, the January topic was Candles and last Friday afternoon I spent some time photographing our candles and then cropping and choosing the best image, which I uploaded later that evening. There have been a few entries this month, and although I have had comments left for me, I haven’t left comments for any of the other entries. I must do that soon.

I had a difficult choice between 2 of my shots and eventually decided for the second one over the first one.

You can click on each picture for a bigger image. Let me know what you think.

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Wander in the woods

by Ian Posted on January 6, 2008

Whipsnade HeathI thought I’d take advantage of the dry weather this morning to get some early morning photos, so I was out before sunrise (about 7:40 actually). It had been a clear night, so I had to scrap the frost off the windscreen before I could go anywhere.

I first went up onto the Dunstable Downs, overlooking the gliding club, but decided that the location wasn’t what I was looking for, combined with the fact that I didn’t have any money for the car park. I drove on into Whipsnade,past the zoo and stopped in the car park on Bison Hill, where I took some mediocre shots before deciding it was too cold to hang around and driving back through Whipsnade to the car park at Whipsnade Heath. I had never been to Whipsnade Heath before, it is an area of shrub and woodland that has overgrown the commonland. I got some good shots here and it was a lot warmer, about 3’C. I got a bit muddy on the circular path through the trees, but it would be well worth coming back in the summer, as it supposed to be good for butterflies. The gorse was in flower, but although I took some shots, I didn’t get good ones.

I’ve put some of the photos I took in a new gallery, Around Whipsnade Jan 2008.

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Happy New Year

by Ian Posted on January 1, 2008

I hope everyone has a great year in 2008.

We went out to the zoo yesterday afternoon to stretch our legs and try out my new camera. The weather was a bit cool, but not too bad. We found when we got there that the carpark was closed and you can take your car in for free between November and February, so we were able to make our way around the zoo including the ‘Passage through Asia’ which is for cars only. It was so quiet in there that we were able to stop and take lots of photos. I have put the best of my photos up in a Zoo_31_December_2007 gallery on my picture gallery.

Some of the pictures I was quite happy with and some of them, I need to understand the impact of the settings and specifically how to adjust the autofocus area mode. The default is for still images and so I missed out on shots where I was following movement, like when one of the lions decided to stalk and pounce on the others.

It could be the lighting or the settings, but the images look a bit soft to me, I’ll have to play some more.

One thing I did miss was the longer focal length. A lot of the photos I have taken over the last couple of years have been at the longer end of my 60-300 Tamron lens with a doubler on. It seemed very strange to only have a 70mm (105mm equiv) instead of 600mm, but I’ll get used to it or get an Tamron Adaptall Nikon mount and use the 60-300 manually.

Posted in General, Photography | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Very Early Birthday Present

by Ian Posted on December 30, 2007

Nikon D80OK, I have no willpower.

About two months ago I posted about deciding to change over to a digital camera. I went into Jessops and had a look at a few. I came away really liking the Nikon D200, but open to the D80 as well. The D200 was reported as being a heavy camera, which I didn’t really find, but then I realised, most of the time recently I have been lugging my Minolta X-500 and Tamron SP60-300 with a doubler on it around, this is almost exactly the same weight as the D200 and 17-55 lens I tested. No wonder it didn’t feel heavy.

I have spent a lot of time over the intervening weeks researching the D200 and D80 cameras, and finally convinced myself that, even though I loved it, I didn’t need the couple of extra features and the additional expense of the D200. So, that was it, the D80 it would be … probably.

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Posted in Photography | Tagged | 5 Comments