Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 320mm, 1000th @ f/5.6, ISO 320

This Bank Holiday weekend I spent some time with fellow photographer Andrew Keen in Powys, Wales. We managed to pack in a lot in two days, including a trip to see Red Kites being fed at Gigrin Farm in Rhayader. Here are a few of my early favourite images – I’ll be blogging soon with more pictures and notes on the equipment and techniques we used.

From here we also managed to visit the Elan Valley with it’s spectacular old dams and reservoirs, and waterfalls near Lake Vyrnwy. The area’s being featured on BBC’s Springwatch series at the moment, you might even see us on there…

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 320mm, 2500th @ f/5.6, ISO 500

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 340mm, 2000th @ f/8, ISO 320

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 340mm, 2000th @ f/8, ISO 320

Last weekend the family trooped off to the coast – the cove to be more accurate, at Lulworth in Dorset. It’s an absolutely beautiful location and the weather was fantastic. We met up with a bunch of my wife Sam’s colleagues, many of which are keen photographers.

Gathering in the car park I looked at all the cameras around me and decided to rebel. There wasn’t a longer focal length than 24mm on display, so I swapped the 24-70 f/2.8 on my D700 for another good landscape lens – the AF-S 70-200 f/2.8.

What do you mean, I hear you ask? My logic was firstly that I didn’t want to come away with the same shots as everyone else. This meant a resolution that I wouldn’t take a shot of Durdle Door as well. Does that make me a bad man? Secondly I knew that there would lots of interesting areas of detail around the cove and buildings which would be fun to look for. The zoom lens should suit this down to a tee, as well as a few of my favourite people shots!

D700, 70-200mm at 200mm, 1/400 at f/8, ISO 200

The stacks of fish containers by the boats caught my eye with the contrasting colours and lines. I tried some shots close by with buoys and the angles of the boats themselves but they didn’t really come out how I thought they would.

D700, 70-200mm at 200mm, 1/200 at f/8, ISO 200

There’s a walled pond just up from Lulworth Cove and I spent far too long tracking these little fellows! The predictive autofocus worked really well while panning on a monopod. The wall that protects the pond makes it difficult to get a good low angle, so the longer focal length is needed to shoot from a narrower angle. I liked this shot with the symmetry of the duckling’s bow wave!

D700, 70-200mm at 86mm, 1/320 at f/8, ISO 200

I love my people shots. It helps when you’ve got great subjects like the lovely Caitlin and her Dad as subjects. I don’t even mind the split contrast in the sunlight, I love the carefree joy of the two year old and adoring look from Dad. Wait till she brings boys home Julian!

D700, 70-200mm at 78mm, 1/160 at f/20, ISO 200

And just to show that you can take a landscape shot with a longer lens – as you’re more selective it forces you (hopefully!) to tighten the composition a little. As I didn’t have a polariser with me I applied a half stop grad on the sky to reign it in.

So there you have it. Lulworth Cove without a shot of Durdle Door. I might have to go back with a wide angle lens, but don’t tell anyone…

I completed a pilgrimage of sorts recently by managing to visit Grays of Westminster. Based in Pimlico, this is an exclusively Nikon camera store from a bygone age.

It’s an interesting place, in perfect character with the surrounding stores in Westminster. Upstairs is where the new equipment is displayed, and pride of place belongs to the new D3X. Downstairs past their reading room is the second hand equipment – an array of F5 bodies in the first cabinet is testament to the demand of digital. The most recent second hand digital body was a D3, but I’m happy with my D700. Unless anyone wants to donate one of course…

Image courtesy of Prweb.com

In essence you can generate a unique ID for anything – Camera, Iphone, pet dog etc – and if that item is lost the finder can enter the ID at sendmehome.com and see the information you’ve decided to share about it. If you want you can order custom labels at $3.99 a pack, or just make your own.

If you find the item you can then add to the item’s story online. As an example, someone left a disposable camera secured to a bench in Santa Barbara asking for people to take a few shots. There’s also a frying pan doing the rounds looking for the ultimate bacon recipe!

Quick post tonight – I’ve had a few situations recently when I’ve wanted to check out product videos or shows which use geolocation and your IP address to work out that you’re not in the US. Because of licensing agreements this can often be the case. So how do you watch the shows?

ReadWriteWeb put me on to a great free little VPN product called AnchorFree. Not only is it free, but when you connect and browse through it you are automatically routed through their network in the US. Which gives you a US IP address!

Download Anchorfree VPN software from here.

Isn’t it daft how the computer industry can standardise itself with the USB connector, but all our mobile phones use different power adaptors – sometimes even within the same brand (you reading Nokia?). Well it looks like being a problem no longer!

According to an article on the Guardian website yesterday a new universal charger has been agreed amongst the major phone companies. I notice that Apple is missing from the list at this point though, I wonder if we’ll see interfaces arrive to get round this?

Here are a couple of my favourites – you can’t beat a bit of slapstick comedy followed by bugs.

You can vote for your favourites at a special YouTube Adblitz site. Voting closes soon though so hurry!