photos and other things…
As the rain falls down heavily today, I have a sort through some images shot yesterday. Typically usual of New Zealand this time of year, yesterday was fine and sunny (but chilly in the shade and quite windy), today is bucketing down.
Images shot between Mission Bay and Saint Helliers, two seaside suburbs just out from Aucklands CBD.
As mentioned yesterday, today I took part in another half marathon – the Mission Bay ADRA Charity Run. With a mostly beach-side track, the run would be great…if one was walking. Running wise, its a real challenge with the sun coming up, bouncing off the sea and also warming the tarmac to a dry hot temperature. Unlike other years I have run it, at least today some of the run was overcast.
Into the first 2-3km of the 21km it became fairly clear that my lack of any training since the last half marathon was going to make today a little harder. Overall I only lost about 4 minutes on last months run, but I was unable to keep a constant pace. Still, I finished and cant complain about that.
Image wise, after finishing I slowly made my way back to the car, got changed and went out again with the Olympus E-500 which I had borrowed again for the day. Shooting on my Nex and Ricoh digital cameras most the time, I had some pleasure shooting the Olympus with its optical viewfinder. I have the plug in electronic viewfinder on my Nex, and its one of the best of the electronic ones on the market, but it just does not compare to the optical – then again, the electronic gives you live view, the optical does not.
Today’s shot was taken over the shoulder of the emcee, congratulating people as they passed the line.
In post processing I simply added the white boarder and resized for the net. Looking at other shots I took, although a few years old, the Olympus really does render nice colours in bright day shots.
Whilst I know my Sony Nex 5N is fine for taking long exposures, I had never tested out my GRD IV to see how it would cope. Being a much smaller sensor then a APS C (Ricoh is 1/1.7 inch) there is the general risk of noise and hot pixels more so then larger sensor cameras. I didnt have much time this evening, but headed out with the GRD and tripod in hand. Just out of the city, on the way to the suburb of Mission Bay I stopped on the corner of the road and clambered down the wall to the rock wave breakers. Setting the exposure to 60 seconds at 100asa, this was the result.Its motivated me to give it a bit more another evening and possibly invest in a remote shutter control.
I must say, the Ricoh never fails to impress me for the size and type of camera it is. It has full manual controls and a fast 1.9 lens. It fits into your pocket, focuses fast and is built tough, as far as digital cameras go. The menu system is one of the best I have used also. Built in filters and effect options are not for everyone, but I think Ricoh have done pretty good with theirs – plus virtually everything in the setting can be tweaked. For many of us camera fans out there, image sensor size is always a hot topic. I think there are pro’s and con’s to the various different sizes. At the end of the day, capturing the image one wants to convey is what its all about isn’t it?
MikeHawkey.com 