Spinnaker Tower at Night from Gosport 1

Originally uploaded by Jim Nicholson

Another milestone has been reached. It seemed just the other day that I was reporting my first photo to get 500 views, now I have a photo that has been viewed 1000 times!

I’ve reached another milestone on Flickr today, this photo is my first one to reach 500 views. It seems not so long ago that I would go for days with no views of my photos.

Loch Sunset HDR

Originally uploaded by Jim Nicholson

I was looking at my statistics on flickr and spotted a reference from an article on ninjacrunch.com to this picture that I took on my trip to Skye back in February.

Its rather flattering that the article is titled “Stunning And The Most Beautiful of Sunset Photography”

Snow Leopard

Originally uploaded by Jim Nicholson

Sibylle of Snow Leopard Blog has used my picture of Yasmin to illustrate an article about the Flickr Snow Leopard group.

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula)

Originally uploaded by Jim Nicholson

I took my DSLR camera with me when I went for lunch yesterday in the hope of getting some nice shots of the new cygnets. I managed to get a couple of shots before I heard a flapping of wings behind me as Dad came and saw me off.

On my way back to the office I spotted this pair of Damselflies next to the lake behind the office. I had to get back a few feet to be able to focus on them as the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR won’t focus less than about 1.6mm. I’ve packed my Sigma 105mm macro lens today so I will try to get some more shots of the insects at lunchtime.

Looks like lots of interesting stuff on that blog, I must keep an eye on it.

Pinhole Boats in Camber Dock (Film)

Originally uploaded by Jim Nicholson

Sunday 25th April was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. People all over the world were out and about with homemade and commercial pinhole cameras.

A group of us from the Flickr Camera Camaraderie group met up outside the Hovercraft Terminal in Southsea and made our way toward Spice Island taking pictures.

I had two cameras with me: a Nikon D300 Digital SLR with a Lensbaby Pinhole / Zoneplate Optic and a Nikon F65 Film SLR with the bodycap pinhole that I mentioned the other day.

You don’t realise how long-winded it is taking pinhole photos unless you’ve done it. The pinhole lets through so little light that you cannot see anything through the viewfinder and hence cannot compose your picture, the pinhole has roughly the same angle of view as a 50mm lens, so you put a 50mm lens on the camera and compose your picture. Then you take that lens off and mount the pinhole instead and (in my case) get the exposure right by trial and error on the DSLR then set the same shutter speed on the film camera, swap that for the DSLR on the tripod and take a picture with that camera.

After a few pictures you get a feeling for the shutter speed you need based on the amount of light. 1/2 second to 1/5 second for bright sunshine 10 seconds inside the Square Tower (all at 400ASA). Why 400ASA? Well when I got my F65 film camera out that was what was loaded in it.

Of course you need to get your film developed, so it was off to Jessops in Fareham yesterday with my roll of film to see how the pictures had come out.  When I went to collect the prints the conversation went:

Him: a lot of the pictures are out of focus

Me: they’re pinhole

Him: cool, well done with the exposure

Me: thanks

So, have a look at my photographs and see what you think.

the guy behind the counter said “a lot of them are out of focus@

I took some more pinhole photographs around work at lunchtime. None of them are at all sharp.

Reading up on this on the internet, the beauty of pinhole photography is that you get equally sharp pictures from close up all the way to infinity, but depth of field does not equal depth of focus (as you can see).

Somebody suggested using extension tubes to move the pinhole further from the sensor (as the ratio of pinhole size to distance to sensor is important for sharpness). I tried all combinations of my extension tubes when I got home and none of them made any difference (and to be honest the article I read said the same thing).

I suspect that the problem is that it is a digital sensor. The camera has a filter in front of the sensor so light needs to enter the filter (nearly) perpendicular, which is what you get from a conventional lens. But the light from the pinhole is coming from a single point and only the pixels near the centre of the frame will get light coming in perpendicular.

I might get the pinhole optic for my lensbaby and see if that is any better, but I suspect not.

Alternatively, I could get some film for my film SLR and use the pinhole on that. No working out the exposure by trial and error like I’ve been doing on the DSLR