Tag: flora

50 days of 50mm #49

As I edge ever closer to the finishing line of my 50 days project, I am keen to reach my goal by the end of this weekend, so decide to get out for a rare week evening outing, for a short stroll with my Pentacon lens

The evening is still rather warm, temperatures have been in the mid to high twenties celcius this week but at just after 7pm, the harsh sunlight has gone.

I decide to take in one of the public parks / gardens, about a 15 minute walk from home, just to see what nature shots I may find.

Using a 50mm lens for this length of time has brought me a lot of pleasure and I have truly realised the versaltility of this focal length.

I have always enjoyed macro photography, but this old lens can focus close in to capture the finer details of nature without the expense of a dedicated lens.

A pleasant way to spend a summer evening

50 days of 50mm #46

Back in the late spring, I visited a forest that to my shame, I had not really explored that much, despite being just a few miles from my doorstep.

I blame my preoccupation of Dartmoor and the nearby coast for my lapse but today, I intend to fulfil a promise I made to myself after the last trip, which was to become more familiar with my local forests and woods.

Immersing myself within this beautiful landscape is not hard, listening to the stonechat just ahead of me, interrupted very rudely by the screech of a jay, neither of which I see, just knowing they are here is good enough.

I choose once more to use my manual focus 50mm lenses (50mm takumar F1.4 and Pentacon F1.8), as I find the act of twisting a focus ring so much more pleasurable than pressing a button, that same feeling goes for changing aperture value on the lens itself, rather than through a screen.

Hopefully the enjoyment I had here is evident in my selection of photos in the gallery below, I will also ensure my next visit will sooner than the autumn.

50 days of 50mm #25

It’s the half way point of my 50 days of 50mm project, something that began as a seed of an idea for a long term project as 2021 came to a close and commenced on my first outing of the new year.

Shooting with a Canon 5d MKII body, I have allowed myself a little indulgence, in that I will occasionally use one of my vintage 50mm manual lenses, the go to lens for this is a Pentacon 50mm F1.8, a lens that had been left forgotten in my collection of old lenses but has become a regular passenger in my camera bag.

This project so far has changed my approach to my photography, before I would have a large camera bag with perhaps 3 lenses, filters and a tripod, these days I rarely take the tripod and the only filter I tend to have with me is a polarising filter.

The simpler set up is clearly lighter but with minimal options in terms of gear, I am thinking more creatively with my compositions, the lens choice dilemma that would sometimes creep into my shot making no longer exists, can only I use what I have.

Today’s venue was to be Stoke Woods, pretty much on my doorstep but my first visit here since autumn last year, I will be hoping for a few bluebells somewhere along the woodland trails but just being around nature is all I need after a busy working week.

I have decided to use the Pentacon lens once more, I am learning to use the corner softness of this lens to my advantage, rather than see it as a flaw.

I have remarked in previous posts how using a manual lens has made me feel more a part of the photographic process again, the 5d body is the same, with no tilting screen, I have to physically get as low I need in order to get the low angle shots, but it is what we all did before, so why not now?

The route through the woods zig zags gently down to the busy ‘Exe valley’ road, where just literally across the road from the woodland trail, is a footpath that leads to some pretty rural villages just on the outskirts of Exeter.

I will follow this path for a mile or so, just to take in some of the scenery that I have captured before including a beautiful old oak tree, however my last image of this arboreal beauty stood majestically in place last autumn, will be my last, as it is now nothing more than a mass of tangled timber, having become a victim of the recent winter storms.

It is just as I begin the return trip back along the path that the sun finally breaks through the cloud, hopefully I can capture some of that light through the trees as I make my way back through the woods…..

50 days of 50mm – Day #23

It has been a rather busy week one way and another, so I am later than usual in posting the second of last weeks camera outings, some may say better late than never.

Having spent Friday and Saturday visiting family, Sunday was my day to travel back to Exeter, taking in a photo walk somewhere on the way back.

That somewhere would be a visit to Staverton Steam railway and a walk along the woodland path, sandwiched between the Railway and River.

With bluebells gradually taking their turn on the botanical stage, it may be a little early to capture that carpet of blue in the woodland but I did find one or two images, a preview of the weeks to come.

Sadly, the full route of this footpath is no longer open at weekends but I understand the need to conserve these areas of natural beauty from the damage of erosion from so much footfall over the years.

I head back to the steam railway station where the first of the new season’s trips have commenced, these stations are kept so immaculately by the team of volunteers, the retro signage and paraphernalia are always an attraction, the photographer’s holy trinity of texture, colour and patina well represented with old sack trucks, travel cases and the mandatory vintage bicycle or two.

There is always a warm friendly feeling to these old stations, perhaps even,a yearning for the days when we were in less of a rush to do everything by yesterday.

After a couple of very pleasant hours, it’s time for a welcome brew before heading back home, where I look forward to seeing my weekend’s efforts and the new memories I have created over the last few days.



Old lenses, modern camera

As digital photography technology advances ever forward, camera companies are cramming more and more megapixels on to sensors, adding ever more features to make the photographic process more instantaneous.
Modern camera lenses are now clinically sharp, even the humble ‘kit lens’ offered with a new camera is no longer the cheap and cheerful offering it once was.

With a long time passion for photography, I have embraced all the above with vigour but I feel that sometimes I am forgetting one of the reasons that I got into photography in the first instance, the whole process of manual focusing a lens, learning how to read the light and expose correctly (more often incorrectly in my early days).
For all my mistakes, they were all part of the learning curve, just one of the many steps in my photographic journey.

Every now and again, I retrace these steps to an extent, by attaching an old manual lens to my mirrorless camera, I went through a stage of finding some cheap lenses through online auction sites, a few of which have become firm favourites and will not be parted with, others were not so good and found their way into charity shops.

Today was one of those days where I took out my Helios 44-2 58mm lens and an industar 50mm 3.5 – 4.5, both od Russian origin, both mass produced so incredibly plentiful and cheap.

The Helios wide open at F2 produces a swirly bokeh, ideal for shots in woodland where the background can be isolated from the subject, the Industar has a more muted colour palette which I like for street photography.

While a manual focusing lens may not be ideal for street photography, there is pleasure to be had in finding a spot and pre focusing, waiting for someone to walk into frame, with a small city such as Exeter, it is just a matter of time before someone obliges.

It is easy to become infatuated with the sharpness and clarity of modern lenses, I love the way these older lenses render colour and light in their own unique way

Maybe I need to spend more time with these legacy lenses, I felt more immersed in the process, rather than just being in charge of pressing a button!

A welcome return to Dartmoor

It has been four long months since I last visited Dartmoor, a trip to Wistmans wood in March, just a few days before lockdown restrictions were put in place.
Realising that such measures were likely, I made sure to savour every step of that March outing, unsure of when I may visit again.

That day was yesterday, to say I was looking forward to it would be an understatement, I could not wait to tread once more amongst the vast openness, to hear the sweet summer sounds of the skylarks soaring above, to gaze in awe at the many tors, stone sentinels of the moorland landscape.

The rain from earlier in the morning had abated but the skies still wore remnants of mist and grey cloud, giving the moor a sombre moodiness, for all I cared it could have been torrential rain, I was just happy to be back on familiar ground.

Dartmoor will always present photo opportunities, the most obvious being the landscape as described earlier, yet I find pleasure in finding the smaller treasures, water droplets on grass, a fallen foxglove petal, or fungi thriving in the humid air, to name just a few.