Fun with cliched effects...

Recent work trip to Devon, visting about 12 pubs a day over four days to talk to the licensees and photograph the pubs. Not as much fun as Toby might imagine, and much more fun than Kevin might imagine. Driving down tiny, twisty country lanes and no drinking involved at all (until I got to the hotel each night).

New LX5 firmware comes with a "tilt-shift" effect built in, which I tried a few times - but forgot to switch camera into JPG mode, which mean the filter effect wasn't on the RAW files. Played around in photoshop instead to try to get a similar effect.



This is the original - pretty dull bar shot, very little DOF. Used the quick mask mode, the gradient tool and then the lens blur filter on the selected area to get the effect.



I'm still not sure if I'm a huge fan of this sort of shot - it's certainly being overused everywhere at the moment. Interesting to see how easy it is to do though.

Landscape - first attempt and also-rans

First try, been meaning to try to get a shot here for years but it's on one of our regular cycle routes, so never managed to stop for the shot. We walked the route this time (all 12 bloody miles of it). Very thankful I had the LX5 rather than the D300!



f2.6, 1/15s (-.3 EV), ISO 80, 47mm

Same place, more or less same shot - preferred the first though:



f3.5, 1/400s (-.3 EV), ISO 80, 26mm

Another LX5 shot - proving its worth as this was staggering back from a drinks do in Borough during GBBF week, never would have had the Nikon with me in these circumstances, but did have the Panasonic and gorillapod in my pocket:



f8, 8s, ISO 80, 24mm

And again, just trying out the long-exposure/low light capabilities of the LX5 - pretty impressed (this is through a hotel room window, which I think has made the blooming/starbursts a bit worse):



f4.5, 60s, ISO 80, 24mm