Watching the skies

Thought I'd have a go at taking some pics of Jupiter, which has been very bright this week - and nice crisp, cold, clear night tonight seemed a good time to do it. Pretty amazed that a 300mm cheapie Sigma lens performs well enough to show three of the four moons (assume the fourth is being coy behind Jupiter itself) All done on tripod with a remote release. Experimentation showed low ISO with longer shutter just resulted in blurred images - too much vibration or wind shaking the tripod. Higher ISO (800-1000) allowed shutter speeds of 1/15 or 1/30s which worked much better. Couldn't get a clearer shot of Jupiter itself - any longer exposure lost the moons without bringing out any more detail on the planet. Shot of moon and Jupiter a composite of two exposures, one for moon, one for Jupiter. Moon shot f8, 1/160s at ISO 200.

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 pic crop

As Kev suggested.

Last of Tom's landscapes...

I'm not sure if these strictly count - let's call them urban landscapes...both wide and vaguely scenic anyway.

(and because I'm boring myself when it comes to the LX5, just assume if I post any photos from it, they were from a situation when there's no way I would have had the D300 with me, therefore I'm feeling smug I've not lost a lovely shot I would have done usually...in this case a routine walk down to the shop for milk)



f2.8, 1/400, ISO 80, 50mm



f3.2, 1/400, ISO 80, 24mm

Just to make us feel inadequate...

As it happens, Guardian photo competition this month was "Landscape" also...

Landscape- 2nd batch

An ideal counterpoint to Toby's sundrenched landscapes - I give you the west coast of Scotland, in one of those rare moments when it wasn't chucking it down with rain during our week up there. These are both from a little fishing town called Kirkcudbright, now an "artists' town" according to the signs on exit and entry. Horrible grey, overcast and flat-light day - all you can do is turn to a bit of black and white and curves/contrast turned to 11.



Above is my favourite of the two.

LX5 again. f8, 1/100, ISO 80, 24mm



Liked this as well, but slightly soft (taken at long end of the Panasonic's lens range might be to blame).

LX5. f3.3, 1/400, ISO 80, 90mm

And I can't work out why my photos are uploading so small - I'm selecting "large" in the options...

Landscapes from Spain #4 and #5

f5.6, 1.6 sec. Using the gorilla pod.

f5, 1.3 sec. Trying out the gorilla pod again.

Tried some longer and shorter exposures, but these seemed to work the best.