Stuart Herbert

Like many before me, I’ve swapped my Dell Inspiron laptop with a nice shiny MacBook Pro. For the money, they’re the best Intel-based laptops around - and I must say that the reviews you may have read online do not do them justice.

The next step is to switch all my photography and music apps over from Windows. Music was easy enough - Logic Express will do me just fine. I wish I’d picked up a copy of the Rhythm Jam Pack at the time, but I can pop into Cardiff next week and put that right.

Photography … that’s a bit more of a challenge. I’ve started playing with the Lightroom beta, and whilst I can see the attraction, there’s a couple of tricks I rely on in Photoshop that I haven’t figured out how to reproduce in Lightroom yet. I don’t want to buy Photoshop until CS3 is out, so for now I might be better off buying a copy of Photoshop Elements, and upgrading to CS3 if I feel the need next year.

The other thing I need to do over the Christmas holidays is either upgrade or replace b2evo, the blogging engine I’ve been using this past year. Unfortunately, Safari doesn’t get on with the admin interface, and Firefox continues to be too much of a memory hog for me to want to stick with it as my main browser.

Just in case anyone is reading this and getting worried that I’ll be completely turning my back on Linux … that isn’t going to happen. Linux on the desktop has always been my preferred development platform, and that isn’t going to change. All I’m doing is switching my preferred creative platform from Windows XP to Mac OS X.

I’ve been lucky enough to make two trips this year to Portmouth’s Historic Dockyard, and you can be sure that my camera was with me on both trips

We English have a long and glorious naval tradition, what with being an island nation and all (especially when it comes to stuffing it to our European neighbours), and major parts of that history is preserved and displayed at the Historic Dockyard. Without a doubt, the three main attractions are the Mary Rose, HMS Victory, and HMS Warrior, with the harbour tour boat a close fourth (especially if you like modern naval warships). There’s far more than you can see in a single day, and its a real treat for all the family.

After the Historic Dockyard has closed for the evening, it’s just a short way past the Spinnaker Tower to the many places to eat at Gunwarf Quays (ah, this is what Cardiff Bay should have been). I haven’t been up the Spinnaker Tower myself yet, but its quite a view just looking at it from the ground - or from the harbour tour boat!

All in all, this place is a serious tourist attraction and magnet; so I was very surprised to find that there wasn’t a group on Flickr for the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. I’ve set one up, and uploaded my better photos from the first two trips. Hopefully the group’ll soon attract more members, and serve as both a great preview and a great reminder of what a fun day out the Historic Dockyard is.

If you do decide to visit the Historic Dockyard with your camera, there’s a few things to keep in mind. Amateur photography is allowed, but professional photography is by prior arrangement only. Photography isn’t allowed in all areas (especially onboard HMS Victory); check the signs around you or ask one of the many helpful guides for advice before clicking away. Many of the more interesting parts of the ships (and the entire Mary Rose ship hall) are very dark. You’ll probably want a tripod, and/or a beanbag, even if you have VR/OS lenses or anti-shake cameras. Don’t count on being able to rest your camera on the fittings or the decks in order to get a stable shot; chances are you’ll find yourself blocking the way of other tourists whilst doing so, and end up being asked to move along by one of the guides. Finally, it may be a Historic Dockyard, but it’s also a Naval Dockyard, so don’t be surprised to find that there’s just too much grey going on if you’re not enjoying blue skies!

(Okay, that’s enough with the advert - now go look at the photos on Flickr )

Kristi and I have just gotten back from a weekend break at Whitby, up on the North Yorkshire coast. Whitby is famous for its magnificent abbey, and for being a Mecca for both photographers and goths - Bram Stoker is said to have written Dracula whilst staying in the town.

We had a great time up there, and I managed to snag a few photos with the D200 before the battery ran flat. We were really lucky with the weather; we got there the day after a full moon, and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen day or night until it was time to come home.

Despite it’s bulk and weight, I’m starting to use the 80-400 lens more often than not. I think half the photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr were taken with it. I have been looking around for the Sigma 70-300 lens (I was very impressed with Sebastian’s), but I’m told there’s a massive shortage of these in the UK; I’ll be sticking with what I have at least until Christmas.

Looking at the results, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing

I’ve finished processing and uploading the rest of my photos from the weekend visit to the Wildwood Trust over in Kent. I ended up with 30 photos from the day.

The whole set of photos were taken using the Sigma 80-400mm lens. About two-thirds of the images were shot in RAW mode, and then converted to JPEGs through Photoshop. I’m very pleased with the level of detail that the Sigma lens has captured, and the colours from the shots. I’m particularly pleased with the contrast on the shots, making working with the RAW files a lot easier than I’d expected. I haven’t been through the photos with a fine tooth-comb, but I haven’t noticed any chromatic abberations. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Sigma 80-400mm lens to anyone looking for a telephoto zoom lens for the Nikon D200.

These photos were taken using the older version of the lens. I was basically too impatient to wait for stocks of the new DG version of the lens to arrive in the UK. Apart from the fact that the lens weighs a tonne - it’s too heavy for the head of my existing tripod - I’m a happy camper.

Sebastian, I’ve finally posted a picture taken with the Sigma 80-400 mm lens. We’ve just gotten back from the Wildwood Trust over in Kent. Whilst we were there, I managed to snag this picture of a raven using the new lens. The image I’ve posted is a crop, but even so I’m very pleased with the level of detail that the new lens captured.

I’ll get a few more shots from Wildwood up on the gallery tomorrow.

Kristi and I are back after spending a wonderful September on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. If you like the outdoors, and/or your mouldy old stones, then I can heartily recommend Arran to you.

I’ve started uploading photos from the holiday to my gallery. So far, I’ve put up some shots of Castlerigg in the Lake District, which we visited on the journey up to Arran.

More photos soon!

Kristi’s recent interest in getting a Nikon D70s has reminded me that I still need to replace some of the lenses that I have. The old adage with photography is that you should put your money into your lenses, not your camera body. I picked up my 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses when I bought my first camera body in ‘97, and back then I couldn’t afford very much

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been replacing lenses in my bag with Sigma lenses. I tend to combine my photography with my walking (although I have done a wedding once for a friend, and wouldn’t say no to doing more), so I’ve been working through the range from wide-angle towards telephoto. You can’t guarantee good light, so I’m aiming to have all my lenses support a constant f/2.8 aperture throughout their focal range.

On holiday in North Wales a couple of years back, I started off my set with Sigma’s 15-30mm wide-angled zoom. I think the ones you can buy today are an improved version, but I’m very pleased with mine. One of the first photos I took with the lens was of Dolbadarn Castle in Snowdonia, framed my the magnificent Llanberis Pass.

A year later almost to the day, I picked up a Sigma 50mm macro lens. Macro photography’s fun, and if you don’t mind lying in the dirt you can get some great shots. A lot of people find the idea of buying a fixed lens (one with no zoom) odd in this day and age; most photographers love their zoom lenses, and would be lost without one. My thinking is that, pound for pound, you’ll get a better quality fixed lens for the same money as a zoom lens - simply because there are less parts to manufacture. This lens has become a firm favourite of mine, and it’s the one I use to take most of photos with today. About the first shot I took with this lens was a spider we came across during a walk on our honeymoon.

At the moment, I don’t feel the need for another macro lens, so next on my shopping list is Sigma’s 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens. This will replace my old Nikon 28-80 G lens, which came with my Nikon F80 camera body. Even a cheap lens like that can be used to capture a beautiful place. The only downside is that the lens is too large to fit my collection of filters - which I guess means I’ll have more room in my camera bag for one final lens.

Apart from being useful for the odd portrait, I’ve found myself needing a telephoto zoom lens to photograph standing stones sited on private property. This sucker is the lens I’d love to have, but at around £1700 and unwieldy physical dimensions, I’ve settled on the more realistic 70-200mm lens, which I’ll also get telephoto convertors for.

But first, I need to buy a mains adaptor for my Nikon D100, so that I can clean the sensor. It’s amazing what you can hide using Photoshop

I bought my Nikon D100 two years ago because I’d grown fed up with the variable accuracy of shooting with chemical film. I’d go out into the Brecons, shoot a roll of 36 exposures, wait for it to be developed … and what came out the other end didn’t look like the shots that I’d thought I’d taken. The colour balance, contrast, and tonal range would rarely match how things had actually looked that day. At £10 a pop just for the costs of the film and developing, it’s just too expensive and frustrating.

Kristi has been using my old Nikon F80 and F60 camera bodies since I got the D100, and as time goes on she’s been taking more and more photographs when we’re out walking. It’s been interesting to watch her go through the same frustrations with chemical film that I did; her frustration’s been made worse because she’s got her own Minolta compact digital camera to compare shots from, and there’s always the shots from my Nikon and Canon digital cameras.

I haven’t actually seen the latest photos that she picked up from Jessops at lunchtime, but I guess they weren’t good enough. She’s retired the F80, and ordered herself a nice shiny Nikon D70s. It should be here in time for the Beyond The Border storytelling festival at the start of July.

As she’s planning to use my lenses with the camera, I hope to get to play with the camera myself. One more than one occaison, I’ve read stories about Nikon D100 users who switched to the Nikon D70 after frustration with the sharpness of the D100’s photos. Personally, I sometimes have trouble getting the focal point correct - the D100’s viewfinder is tiny compared to the F80’s - but from what I’ve read the D70’s viewfinder is identical in size. Still, if the D70s can help me take even better pictures, I might just have a D100 to put up for sale on Ebay later this year.

A lot of the evening has gone importing and sorting two new sets of photos from Mouldy Old Stones trips we’ve done since the start of May. Whilst I was doing that, I came across some old photos from 2003’s Beyond The Border storytelling festival. I’ve uploaded the best of these old photos into the new By The Sea gallery. Enjoy!

I\’ve just committed an ebuild for mypictures. It\’s a simple but effective photo gallery. I\’m using it myself for my own photo gallery. If you need something to publish your photos, give it a try.