Hardwick Wood and Caldecote Church

 Our Cambridge Camera Club (and RPS Nature Group) outing was to have been to Waresley Wood but this was closed until the day so we relocated to Hardwick Wood, which in many ways is a better venue. It is certainly at its best and has the finest displays of  spring flowers for several years with all the species out together. Paul and I visited Caldecote Church meadow at the end for the Fritillarias and also a couple of bees. I was using mixture of focus stacking with the X100v and single shots with the 80mm macro. The bees are with the X100V (23mm). The third shot is with a legacy Olympus lens - I love the softness of this but found it too difficult to manually focus in the bright and contrasty light.  Last shot shows some of the group in situ!!

Projects for Lockdown

At our CCC Wednesday Workshop yesterday evening (on-line of course), we looked at table top miniatures to keep our cameras active during Lockdown. Here is one image I prepared for the evening and the set up I used.

CCC Evening of Table Top Set Ups

Thanks Barry, Charles and Shelagh for a fantastic range of activities last night at Wednesday Workshop. I stole a few minutes from my 'set up' to photograph the soap bubbles, polarised spoons, splashed pepper and moon in the hand. The soap bubbles are a perpetual challenge not yet overcome to get sufficient depth of field and shutterspeed (the surface swirls continuously) in dark conditions.

Creative Fun with Colour

As part of an evening welcoming new members to CCC, I brought along some dichroic cubes and and orange/blue polariser for members to play with. These were my test shots.

An International Evening with Focus Stacking and Penguins

Last night we had a Table Top evening at CCC and this gave an opportunity to play around with focus stacking a Lambretta, drown a couple of ducks and a Penguin and be creative with dried flowers. Thanks to Barry and Shelagh B for their set ups and Paul K for letting us see Intelligent Arsenal in a bit more depth.

CCC Flash Workshop

 Yesterday, we ran a workshop at Sylvie's house for 12 people to practise their skills with flash photography, including balancing ambient and studio flash in portraits with model Bernadette, using off-camera flash guns for dramatic lighting and lighting table-top set up with their own flashes and triggers. The last image sums up the day as we all trouped in and out for warming cups of tea etc.