Flower Portraits 1

Started to work on technique with the Tilt and sift lens - slow progress as it involves manual settings and difficult camera positions.

jungfraujoch

As the weather looked fine for the morning, we decided to take our one trip through the Eiger up to the Jungfraujoch. The station where the train arrives is just off to the left on the first image and the Observation building can be seen in the second image. The choughs were amazingly tame - great fun with their yellow beaks and red legs.

Lenses for Flower Photography

I have brought a variety of lenses to use for flower photography and gave most of them an outing yesterday. The pansies are taken with a 70-200mm lens with an 25mm extension ring, the Butterfly orchid with the 24mm tilt and shift, the Dark Vanilla orchid with a 50 mm macro and the Rampion with the G12 macro mode. The light was very harsh for the pansies and getting a bit low for the two orchids.

Day in the Blumentahl

The weather forecast proved totally wrong as the sun shone most of the day with a short storm in the evening. We went across to Murren and then into the Blumentahl (Valleys of Flowers). The light was a bit bright for flower photography but great for the insects etc as could get enough depth of field versus shutterspeed.

Sunrise at Wengen

These were taken for Tricia an hour ago - now the cloud has bubbled up and the mountains have disappeared. Rain is forecast but fingers crossed.

Arrived in Wengen and the rain came

Our first evening in Wengen has been very changeable as regards weather - sunshine, showers and even rainbow

More tests with G12

I used some time in the Travelodge, where we are having an overnight stay before early flight to Geneva in the morning, to try bit more macro. This time I tried with focus set to servo and got a few acceptable images.

Close-up Hollyhock

Experimenting with G12 macro mode. It seems to be hit and miss but can produce very reasonable close-up images when the focus locks in

New Foals

We have new foals in the field along our lane. They are still a bit wobbly especially the white one

who doesn't stay on his feet that long. Great study of genetics as each foal is so like its mother.

Visit to Monach Farm

Thanks to Ian, we had a great afternoon at Monach farm Hilton, where they keep many rare breeds of goats as well as a riding stables with various breeds of horses etc. the goats are delightful and their milk makes very good ice cream!
Image two needs a caption - any suggestions?

Ely Cathedral Outing

Great trip to Ely yesterday and thanks to Lionel I got on the tour up into the octogan - owe you a lunch next outing. I have just got a Canon G12 as I wanted a good compact to act as a backup on my forthcoming trip to the Swiss Alps so this was a good time to test it. It takes Raw and appears pretty grain free at the low ISOs.

It has so many bells and whistles I can't imagine anyone would use them all but the HDR did seem pretty impressive. The first picture below is in camera HDR and the second HDR from RAW images processed with Nik effects HDR software. The colours are a bit more muted with the in camera HDR but this could be sorted in processing though of course it is now a jpeg. The images below this are also in camera HDR.

Fog Bound in Guernsey

I had a walk round as my flight was delayed by fog - certainly no danger from low-flying aircraft as there were no planes on the island. There were the usual scenes of 'Waiting' inside the airport.

Gulls etc

We walked across to Lihou Island this afternoon where the gulls were very confiding. A chance to sort out Herring (pink feet and grey back) from Great Black Backs (pink feet, black back) from Lesser Black Backs (yellow feet). The Oystercatcher took my eye in among the yellow lichen covered rocks.