December 11th - 17th 2006
Sunday Gurning
Saturday Snap-happy
Friday Vauxhall
Thursday Ballworthy
Wednesday Vauxhall
Tuesday Sigmatised
Monday Vauxhall
Sunday 17th December
Vauxhall Is Gurning 2006
(click for pix)
Saturday 16th December
Only once I got out from under the duvet, and hauled the not-inconsiderable weight of my new kit out onto the street, did I begin to realise just how long the Sigma lens was.
Even on my old Olympus, I'd never really done much telephoto work: given that even the smallest amount of camera-shake gets exponentially magnified by a long lens, I didn't see the point [pun intended].
The minimum focal length of the Sigma I'd bought to work with until the posh lens finally arrived was 70mm, the equivalent of 105mm on an old-fashioned film-based SLR. That's three times as long as the default setting (the only one that really worked) on the Mju.
Taking the D80 down to my time-honoured viewpoint by the river, the limitations were immediately apparent.
A standard shot on the Mju gave me a lot of river and a fair stretch of pricey real-estate on the other bank of the Thames, with Canary Wharf crowning the vista in the distance. With the Sigma at its absolute minimum, you could just about get the towers of Canary Wharf into the shot. (With the Sigma at the extreme end of its range, equivalent to 450mm, I could take paparazzi shots of bankers' mistresses in their riverside apartments.)
Further afield, down on the Embankment by the Houses of Parliament at 10 o'clock at night, the standard Mju shot took in the whole of the London Eye with room to spare. With the Sigma (and a tripod), it was impossible to get it all in.
As an early challenge, and as something of a rehearsal for the upcoming Vauxhall ball, I packed (well, threw) the camera and the lens into my shoulder bag and took them down to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for an episode of David Hoyle's magazine.
When - let's say if - the Nikon VR lens finally arrived, I'd be in charge of over a grand's worth of equipment, way too big to slip into your pocket, and way too valuable to simply hang round your neck (with its little flashing sign saying "Mug me! Mug Me!")
I needed to know just how scarey it was to carry that around, in London, at night. I needed to be sure that security staff wouldn't take exception to my bringing it into a venue. And, by far the most important point, I needed to find out just how drunk I could get before it all got impossibly alarming.
You've been looking at the results of that expedition for the last five pictures (from the red curtain upwards): hand-held, no flash, and pretty damn sharp. I think we can count it a success.
As was, I hope you will agree, my trip to Vauxhall is Gurning...
Friday 15th December
Vauxhall, Autumn 2006
Thursday 14th December
A professional photographer, presumably, on receiving new kit, puts it together and takes it out for a spin, testing its limits, calibrating its curves, calculating weak points and potential pitfalls.
Me, I hopped back under the duvet and proceeded to take pictures of the heaped and rumpled clothes on the other side of the room, crying "Cor!" at random intervals.
Perfectly-judged exposure of the daylight filtering through the sheet that serves me as a bedroom curtain. Cor! Pin-sharp reproduction of the collar-stitching on the shirt draped over the chest of drawers at the far end of the room. Cor! Beautifully-saturated colour on the stack of unworn t-shirts. Cor! And, oh look, the built-in flash!
After the cheap-and-nasty, one-burst-fits-all approach of the Mju, the Nikon's flash was a revelation: powerful yet subtle, so much so that I often had to look twice to work out whether the flash had decided to get involved at all.
The other thing that I appreciated almost immediately (in amongst a lot of ooh-I-wonder-what-this-button does?) was that - in fact - I often didn't need the flash at all.
In my dingy bedroom, towards the end of an overcast British winter afternoon, the Nikon's high-speed capabilities were giving me thoroughly acceptable images, images which, once I'd worked out how to get them out of the camera and into the computer, showed virtually no noise at all.
We shall go the ball!
Wednesday 13th December
Vauxhall, Autumn 2006
Tuesday 12th December
With Zen-like patience, I sat playing with my fabulous new camera that couldn't take any pictures for, ooh, about twenty-four hours before sighing, raising the budget yet again, and reluctantly deciding to treat myself to something to see me through the wait for the back-ordered AF-S DX VR 18-200mm lens.
Impatience was part of that, of course, but there was also a marginally more cogent rationale: it was only a week or so to go before Horse Meat's much-anticipated Vauxhall Is Gurning terror-drag-spectacular, an irregularly-scheduled night of madness at whose previous incarnation I'd been much miffed to come up with just one not-even-halfway-decent shot.
This year, I was determined to do better. And that meant I needed a lens, godammit.
But what lens? Something complementary to the 18-200mm range of the lens I was waiting for, ideally but..hmmm.
Translated into analogue measurements, 18-200mm covers everything from yer basic wide-angle 28mm through to a pretty-damn-hefty 300mm telephoto; that doesn't leave a lot of ground uncovered.The only gap I could see was something that would offer me a macro facility: I definitely wanted to use the new camera to get back into some still-life stuff some time in the future.
I settled for a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro: slightly longer at its top-end, which might be useful in a Gurning-style situation; could be faster but generally well-reviewed; not half as good as the back-ordered Nikon lens, of course - but, then again, not half so expensive either.
Mildly pissed off with Pixmania for its constant re-scheduling of delivery dates, I ordered this cheaper lens from Jessops. And, lo and behold, it arrived the very next day.
Finally, I was in a position to take some damn photos.
Monday 11th December
Vauxhall, Autumn 2006
......previous week
