Just got a DJI Spark and having some great fun with it. Surprisingly good smooth video (HD 1080p). 4K doesn't really interest me at the moment and takes some serious computing power to edit and render. Here is some of the video from a trip to Killinthomas Woods, Kildare and Portmarnock Beach. Mind you there were some anxious moments when it does some of its built in routines. It went so far I thought I would lose it at sea! Anyway here's a bit of video from my first attempts at flying and videoing! https://vimeo.com/229624180
Camera Club Outing to Dublin City
Last night the club had an outing to Dublin City, and it was a beautiful evening. A good turn out of about 20 people. Myself Alison and Tony headed around the Grand Canal Theatre and the Liffey. I enjoyed the photography and the company immensely and the couple of drinks in the ELY Bar at Grand Canal. Great to be able to sit out on the open air and enjoy a few drinks. Of course, time ran by very fast and we had a very quick dash for the train home which we nearly missed altogether, in fact they were locking up and the train was on the platform as we ran up the escalator. Any way here are a few shots from the night any feedback appreciated.
Time Lapse experiment
For a while now I've been interested in trying some Timelapse photos, though they're probably really videos. Anyway yesterday I found a piece of software called LRTimelapse which works in conjunction with Lightroom t o create timelapses, see LRTimelapse. I copied it down and had a look at some of the tutorials. So this morning I decided to get up early and try some shots around the Estuary at sunrise. It was very cold but a fantastic sunrise, see some of the shots below. Of course I had to jump in and try one of the hardest things to do a timelapse of, the sunrise or sunset. The problem is the steadily rising exposure of sunrise causes problems getting the exposure right throughout the timelapse particularly when using manual settings. If you use automatic settings you get a flickering effect as the exposure of each shot can be minutely different to the previous one. I gave it a shot anyway, 8 seconds between each shot, using the interval shooting option on the camera. The next problem is the size of the CF Card. It takes 30 shots to give just 1 second of video, so you have to shoot a lot of shots to get just 10 seconds of video (300 to be exact). If you shoot in RAW thats a lot of data that fills up your card quickly. If you shoot in JPEG you can't manipluate the exposure etc. in post processing as well. So a lot more difficult than I was expecting. On the plus side this morning it was a great sunrise.
Here is the basic unedited version, as you can see the exposure brightens a lot, need to work on sorting this out, but I like the look of it.
Here are a couple of images from the sunrise.
estuary-9518_120202
All comments welcome!
Happy New Year and the first shoots of 2012
Well 2011 is over and it was another tough year for everyone, and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better too fast. So we may as well make the best of it. So far since Christmas I've been out on 4 shoots with friend from the camera club and although the weather wasn't the best for photography we had some good fun and it got us out into the open air.
The first shoot was the Wednesday after Christmas which Sheldon organised and called it a Wayzgoose, which according to Wikipedia is defined as: "A wayzgoose was at one time an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen each year on or about St Bartholomew's Day (24 August)." Anyway about 8 turned out and we started at 7.45am at Highrock Malahide and 6 of us headed off to Glendalough for Breakfast and a few more shots. It was a cold but mostly dry day we lst another 2 by midday but the remaining 4 of us headed off to the Avoca store for a fine meal and the first good day ended and I got home about 5pm.
Joe Doyle and I headed off to Dollymount the following Wednesday for sunrise but the sun only showed itself for about 30 seconds. But I had a bit of fun again with my 10 stop filter, need a bit more practice though. Next we headed to Howth for sun rise the following Saturday and the sun was kinder to us but not as well placed for the lighthouse as we hoped. that afternoon we headed to the National Cyclocross championships - St. Anne's Park. We got a few better images there. Anyway for what they're worth here's the best of the bunch.
Malahide Golf Club
Last week the club headed off early at 5am to take some photos of the local Golf Club, unfortunately the light wasn't great but here they are. Some of the shots were taken with my new Olympus XZ-1, these are the versions without the ART filter applied (the versions with the art filter can be seen here). The shots here are just photoshopped, well actually Lightroomed!! The rest were taken with my Nikon D700 although 3 were taken with my G9 on a reccie we did.
Hope you enjoyed, leave any comments you like here :-)