Summer already?

Here, in good old London town we have managed to string a few days of good weather together. Driving through the outskirts of London the hedgerows and trees seem to have exploded and look as though they need a good shave. I know this as Sinead and I have just returned from a vital Marks and Spencer's run to Colney Heath on the outskirts of London - possibly into Hertfordshire! I needed some casual smart shirts for a family event tomorrow and as usual, I left things to the last moment but G-d love M&S they came to the rescue! A quick look on their website and I like what I see and amazingly I find the exact shirts in my size in multiples of two and we bag a brace at the store. The added complication and pressure is that we have this mission to complete between leaving Hannah to Guides and then collecting her at 9pm. Thankfully the traffic is running well and we hit M&S at 745pm, the shopping is complete by 810pm and we return to HA1 by 840pm - very comfortably within the two hour window. 

The image above is St Alban's Church where Hannah's Guide group is based and I had time to shoot a few frames - camera details are below.

Another test image from the Canon G9 - iso 100, P mode and jpg.

Processed through LightRoom with minimal adjustments - the auto exposure is so good!

So which camera is it . . .

Most camera companies seem to have an 18 month upgrade cycle, whereas I seem to come in at 24 months - for compact cameras that is! I have been reading great things about this puppy since it hit the stores back in September '07. Whilst I still love my Ricoh GRD, the unique selling point of a fixed 28mm lens was beginning to wear thin and I hankered after the long lens end of things. The Canon G9 has a 35 - 210mm zoom and if I need to shoot wide, I simply shoot overlapping frames and stitch in Photomerge in CS3 - example below of a 7 frame comp.



The main reason for upgrading to the Canon G9 was the reinstated RAW capability - apparently this was dropped from the G7 to great dismay. Predictably, I went straight to manual exposure and the RAW mode but found the files not particularly sharp or easy to correct. Almost by mistake, I shot some frames as JPGS and have shot JPG and Programme mode ever since! The Auto exposure is spot on, needing only minor tweaks in LightRoom and the camera is even more responsive and capable of recording many more images on the SD card.





The two aircraft images were shot at a privately owned Mosquito Aircraft Museum near Shenley, Hertfordshire that I was "allowed" to find on our Bank Holiday Monday afternoon drive. Our stay was all too brief as we wandered in without paying and we didn't want to push our luck too much - £5 each for adults and £3 for Hannah - too much for a small collection especially with two girls in tow that have little interest in aircraft!



Above is the result of a fast panning shot where I had been shooting long lens details but heard the Police car's siren and was able to zoom out and grab the image . . .

Overall - having collected the Canon G9 last Friday - I find the camera intuitive to use, just the rights size and weight and built like a tank! I have ordered an extra battery, another 2Gb Sandisk SD card, a lens hood and a stick on handgrip - so my commitment to the G9 is obvious. I now need to work its use into wedding use - possibly as a silent camera through the ceremony?

Now to clean up the Ricoh GRD and move it on through eBay!

Chateau Ribagnac Virtual Tour - live very soon

The great unsuspecting traveling public will be able to tour the extensive grounds and shabby chic interiors of Chateau Ribangac. I originally shot the tour and many other images for Colette and Patrick last September over a five day period. Once back in London I spent quite a bit of time to create a working tour - something that has paid off and is usually the only way to show clients with a fully functional tour. Having spent so long on this project, it only took another two hours to recode the movies as they were transfered to the Chateau's site.

All should be online very soon - watch this space.

Wedding Guests

Our wonderful neighbours, here in North Harrow, invited Sinead, Hannah and I to the Champagne Reception and Evening Dinner to celebrate the wedding of their daughter Nisha to Nimit a couple of weeks ago. Shobna and Buppendra welcomed us to the neighbourhood almost 13 years ago and we soon built up a friendship where amongst other things we look after each others homes when we/they are on holidays.

We were honoured to be seated with Buppendra's brother's family at a table right beside the Top Table! The food was vegetarian and superb and I have never seen Sinead and Hannah tuck into the feast so eagerly! The tandoor paneer being a firm favourite. The entertainment continued with speeches and dancing and Sinead could not get over how animated everyone was, especially the men - no holds barred "stacking the shelf and changing the light bulb" dancing from the off!

Wedding recces

I love a recce! Be it local, a drive to the country or as, today a very efficient Tube ride to St. James's and Dukes Hotel. The image above is, in fact from a wedding recce in Lewes, East Sussex, a couple of Sundays ago when we had the last couple of days of good weather. The couple and I had a great stomp around the venue and various and many locations in the centre of Lewes, including the Castle. This was an exercise in what we wanted to shoot and what not, areas that seemed good on paper, were soon dismissed in preference to other locations. Always such a useful thing to do at one's leisure rather than faffing around on the wedding day.

Their venue was originally the local council offices and now converted to a swish restaurant and small exclusive hotel. This is a small wedding but offers big picture opportunities and a couple who are up for the challenge - should be good.

The reason I mention this recce with today's trip into St. James's is that the Lewes bride to be used to work at Dukes Hotel and that is how she found my details . . . Today's meeting was with September's American bride and her Parents at Dukes Hotel. Another smaller wedding (85 guests) but it has the potential for something special, especially with a military angle and a few Bear skins thrown into the mix!

There are a few timings to iron out but so far - things are looking good.

As mentioned before most, if not all images on this blog were shot with the Ricoh GRD . . . Well folks there is a new kid on the block - more of which later in its own post but safe to say the Ricoh may be on eBay soon!

The image above and below were shot with the new camera, on P mode (auto exposure) and with minimal LightRoom processing and greatest shock of all . . . shot as JPGS! Yes folks, the jpgs out of this pup are phenomenal! More later.

I'm a great fan of giving credit when credit is due and our venerable Tube system covering London always comes in for constant criticism. On this occasion, my return trip to St. James's couldn't have been smoother or closer to the advertised times on the online journey planner. In fact I was almost 25 minutes early but i managed to fill this with picture making with the new toy. The meeting went well and the Parents loved the Parents' and Guest Books as well as the main Wedding Book - could be a good one!

And another month . . .

Time is flying by - frighteningly so! Many things have happened in the past month and the most important thing is that, as of this morning, Sinead returned to the Surgery to go back to mornings, for this week only, we hope. Sinead seems to have healed in textbook fashion and we hope to resume normal service as soon as possible . . .

The image above is one of many from a soggy Oxford and Cambridge Boatrace - a day I have covered for the oldshipw6 on the Thames for almost ten years. Always a fun day that is dictated to by London's weather and we have experienced tropical sunshine through to this year's wet and windy conditions. All went well and further images from he day can be seen at
http://www.oldshipw6.co.uk/boatrace2008

As you may have read in a previous post, my main work Mac decided to leak and give up the ghost . . . In a flurry of eBay selling, mostly old and valuable bits for Ed, I included the G5 carcass and 4.5Gbs of memory for sale.

To cut a long story short the Mac went for £165 and the memory for £41 - quite amazing and a 15% contribution to the new Mac that was purchased two weeks ago. Back to business and soooooo fast!!!

Unbelievably there is next to no visual difference and the only differences being a second optical drive door and a different, more useful range of input sockets on the front.

What is the big difference is that this Mac is almost silent, runs without a liquid cooling system (odd choice in the first place but state of the art four years ago) allows the insertion of extra sata Hard Drives in seconds and is just so quick!