Tag: Ricoh GRD

Beside the Bombay Hills

Bombay

At the southernmost point of Auckland is the Bombay Hills. For Aucklander’s they signal one is leaving ‘town’ and heading into the country. For non-Aucklander’s, it signals they are approaching the big city. Whilst mostly tongue and cheek, there is a bit of a division between Auckland and some other areas of the country. Its widely said not to say you are from Auckland – in reality I have never had a bad experience from it, just some friendly jesting from one Kiwi to another.

A popular area for various crops, what I love about the Bombay Hills is the amazing view one can get when driving south. Different seasons give a completely different, but equally magnificent view. Today’s image was just to the left, along a small road.

Shot on the Ricoh GRD IV(28mm) in bleach bi-pass mode, aside from resizing, I made no edits – its straight from the camera.

Not many days left in 2012 now!

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The Bicycle

Another fine day in Auckland and another day where my schedule allowed me to bicycle to work. After reading an interesting article on The f8 Blog, by Olivier Duong, I decided to have a play around with the snap focus on my Ricoh. Its a feature that many GR owners love, especially for street shooting. A standard feature on all Ricoh GR cameras, I will have to give it a try some time on my GR1 also. The benefit? – I would suggest just reading Oliviers article, but essentially it allows you to pre-set focus, which along with a manually set aperature and shutter equals a very fast street snapping machine.

For today’s photo, I was on the street, but not quite street snapping. Hitting the road with the GRD IV set to B&W, I wanted to get a strong silhouette of shadow as the main section of the image. Did I need snap focus for this? no, not really, but it didn’t harm.

In post processing I cropped to square format. I could have done this in camera, but as I was riding my bike at the time, and its a fixed gear cycle, I decided post gave me a little more flexibility and slightly more safety. I pushed the contrast a little more and also adjusted sharpness.

Weekend time!

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Welcome to My House

I took a stroll into part of Unsworth Reserve today after work. I have passed it may times throughout the years, but never stopped. A great little bush, albeit easy to walk down a dead end track. On my return leg I dove down another dead end path and came across this seat in the middle of no where.

How it got there I don’t know, but it made me think of the storybook ‘where the wild things are’, and various articles I have read about people who essentially abandon society and go bush (or desert, or island etc).

Depending how one looks at it, its either a slightly creepy image, or a cool one, imagining oneself waking up in the forest and sitting down for a morning cuppa on your couch.

In gimp I played around with levels and added a vignette lomo filter. The focus of the image was not quite right, but I liked the content, so ran with it anyway for today.

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Storm Warning

New Zealand has been hit with a mild weather bomb (depending which part of the country you are in) these last few days. Overall in Auckland we have only had a bit of high wind and low cloud. Yesterday this combined with a little light rain – nothing to get excited about.

In between appointments I snapped this image down at Narrow Neck beach in Devonport using my Ricoh with a tweaked bleach bypass setting.

Using Gimp, I cropped the aspect a little, removing some of the tree and more grey sky. I applied a light softening blur, slightly desaturated and lightly adjusting the hue. Lastly I added the rounded corners.

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The Tree

I got talking with a guy I sold a camera to today. Like myself, he had a collection of both film and digital cameras – the film being anything from 35mm to large format. One thing we discussed was how far the level of digital photography, or I should say its quality has come.

For the average (and non average) Joe, many of our images are either displayed on TV and computer screens, or perhaps a handful printed out. Often, they are shared on various online forums, blogs and sites at a much reduced quality than produced by the camera (for example, my first 2MP camera makes bigger prints than my resize size for my posts). Aside from some particularly nice monitors, your average TV screen is far below the quality of your average camera.

Sure, the non branded cameras can be of a lower quality, but even the average smart phone captures a decent image no days.

When specials come up on A3 and A2 photo canvases I like to grab one to print out a recent personal favourite. Looking around my room, 3/4 of all my A2 canvases were taken on my Ricoh GRD IV. Arguably it has a fantastic prime lens, perhaps one of the best for compacts, but the ‘film’ (aka sensor) is still an older CCD 1/1.8″ (larger than many compacts, but still tiny).

I guess at the end of the day, today’s rant is really just a self reminder, and a thinking point to others out there asking the question “do I/you really need to upgrade?” there are always arguments in the ‘for’ category (low light capability perhaps one), but for those of us who remember film days, we have far exceeded some of the limits film placed upon us – maybe its just a case of knowing your camera(s) and their capabilities and pushing that, rather than reaching for the next new model?
Oh – and today’s image! – Shot on my Sony Nex5N, kit lens. In post using Gimp I pushed up the saturation a little. Felt like some colour!

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Follow the Leader

‘Follow the Leader’ seemed the natural title when I snapped this badelynge of ducks at Kell Park in Albany after work.Getting down low with the Nex 5N and 16mm lens, I think they initially thought I came bearing gifts, and soon changed direction when they realised they were just getting their pictures taken.

Its funny the amount of names a duck ‘pack’ can be given: Often referred as a paddle of ducks, we also see them called a flock, raft, team, badelynge, bunch, and brace.

Kell park itself offers a nice walk by the creek amongst native bush of Albany. It has a big playground for children, and lots of seats to sit back and relax in the environment. Back when I was young it also had an abundant public pear grove, where one could fill up sacks of pears to take home (or eat whilst helping) – I didn’t get to that part of it today, so don’t know if the trees are still around.

I made the decision today that I’m going to go almost technology-free next week in Fiji. I will have my Ricoh GRD IV, but other than that, not even my mobile phone. I work around computers all day long and have decided I will go without for a week. It will most likely be a bit of a shock to the system for me! I plan to set up some images to auto post throughout the week, so none of you reading this will go without – you will just have to wait a few weeks before seeing my Fiji images.

My final news for the day was that I received a self-birthday gift today – a Ricoh GR1. The granddad of my GRD IV, I have been keen on getting one for some time. Generally they fetch quite high prices, so when one popped up at a reasonable price (and around my birthday) I could not resist. That’s going to mean I have a digital and film 28mm holiday next week!

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Hiding from the Sun

‘Hiding from the Sun’ came from one of my bush walks over the last month – I think Smiths Bush. I always love how the light filters through the canopy and down to the floor of the forest. Often one does not even realise how dark it is in the bush until you hit a pocket where the sun has broken through to peer inside.

Shot on the Ricoh, I resized for the net, but otherwise it is untouched.

Looking ahead to my Fiji trip in a little over a week, I am toying with the idea of taking a cheap and nasty (/fun) film camera along with my Ricoh. I will likely shoot in digital most the time, and rather then my Rollei 35, I’ll use something for a bit more of the lomography experience. We will see…I’ll look through what I have, and what I am waiting for in the post (have ordered a plamodel kitset camera for some fun) and make a decision closer to the time.

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Into the Storm

As I often state on weekdays, I just managed to get a bit of light after work on the way home. I had packed my Nex and its new lens into my bag, hoping to give it a test out. Whilst I did manage that, and got some nice shots (and some flat sundown ones) I wanted to post up something different to my usual nature/landscape. With the lens at 210mm I set about looking for some wildlife. It proved quite still and dull overall tonight.

Just as I was heading back to the car a few seagulls approached and I managed to get off a few shots. With low light and a long lens the autofocus just missed a number of shots, but I did like this one of the bird heading ‘into the storm’.

In post processing using Gimp all I did was push the contrast to make it look more menacing than it actually was. Shot at 210mm, 1/400sec at 1250iso the push also revealed the digital grain of the image. I’m a grain fan in photos (that old film appeal) so am happy letting it sit.

In about 3 weeks I’m off to Fiji for a week, which is pretty exciting as I have never been there. My current dilemma is do I take a bag full of cameras and lenses, or travel more lightweight (with the added benefit of not carrying so much money investment!). I’m leaning towards taking my Ricoh GRD and my Rollei 35. I’ll also have my smart phone to hopefully post a snap each day also. When I went to the South Island last year I only had my Ricoh and Mju 35mm – I think the compact allows you to travel with ease and think more about how to capture the image. What do you all do?

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Serenity in the Mud of Eskdale

As I often do, I searched for a short bush walk to explore after work today. One great thing about the North Shore (or many areas of New Zealand really) is that you are never far from some form of nature walk. Heading towards the Birkenhead area I stopped at a place called Eskdale Bush. 10min into the walk and it became obvious that my flat soled leather work boots were not very well equipped for the completely sodden wet terrain. Dodging the muddy patches, I still managed to get ankle deep, remarkably without ending up on my backside.

Mud aside, Eskdale Bush is a wonderful walk with numerous tracks one can turn into. Surrounded by the suburbs, there is no real risk of being badly lost. Just as I hit one of the lower and deeper parts of the bush I came across a small, possibly newly formed, stream. With the Ricoh set to 800iso I positioned as low and stable as the slippery surrounding would allow and followed the stream into the forest.

In post production using Gimp, I felt a little lazy today and applied the ‘national geographic’ filter – one I often like the out of the box result with.

After the loss of my Olympus Mju over the weekend, I took delivery of a cheap as chips Samsung Fino 140 pocked film camera today. Although nothing special it looks to be a very nice late model film shooter with a 38-140mm lens. I’m not expecting much, but am looking forward to seeing how it performs with some B&W film…that’s after I finish the film already inside it!

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