Miscellaneous

Frogs getting up to some froggy mischief

Thu Apr 8th - 5:49pm

Here’s an odd sight that greeted me while out for a walk today, a pile of three frogs getting up to mischief. There was certainly some rough play going on here, especially from the one on top that was hanging on to the big one for all he was worth, while trying to kick the back one away.

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Police: We know you’re right, so don’t pay the fine!

Wed Mar 10th - 10:39pm

Mind if I use my blog to have a whinge?

Okay so we're down in Glasgow for a few days. Naturally we're using sat-nav to get around, and that got us in trouble today in the city centre as it told us to turn left at a junction which sent us along a bus-only lane. We were then immediately stopped by the police and given a £30 fine.

According to the police officers there were two "clearly displayed" no-left-turn signs on the building opposite the junction, a thick white line down the middle of the road which "indicates that one side of the road is a bus lane", and the lane itself was "marked as a bus lane".

Here's the view from the junction:

After I went back and took that photo, I showed it to the police officers and they immediately accepted that there were no signs on the building opposite, there was no line in the middle of the road, and the bus lane itself wasn't marked in any way. They accepted that the only sign was the blue "bus only" sign facing down the hill, which is almost side-on when seen from the junction.

So presumably the fine could be cancelled?

Wrong! They had been told to come and hand out fines to anyone turning left at that junction, so that's what they had to do. But they both advised me not to pay the fine, saying that it was unlikely to ever go to court, and even if it did then I was likely to win if I used the photograph as evidence.

What a waste of time and police resources!

(There was actually a no-left-turn sign at the junction, but it was high up and further back than usual so I didn't even notice it when I first went back to take that photo. In fact it was so easy to miss that the police didn't even know it was there.)

As you can see from the next photo, other people made the same mistake:

In the 20 minutes or so that we were there, talking to the police and taking photos, I'd estimate that 9 out of every 10 drivers coming out of that junction turned left, came up the hill and got stopped by the police. Pretty clear evidence, I'd say, that the no-left-turn isn't clearly marked and therefore drivers shouldn't be fined for making an honest mistake.

What I'd like to know is: Once the police realised that the junction signage was inadequate, why did they continue to stop people and fine them?

And how many thousands of pounds in fines are being handed out every day on that one stretch of road, when the problem could be fixed simply by putting up a few signs where drivers might actually see them?

Whinge over

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The curious case of Tesco and non-alcoholic drinks

Thu Feb 4th - 9:49pm

There have been two quirky stories about Tesco in the news recently, one about them banning shoppers from wearing pyjamas and another about a 24-year-old woman being asked for ID because she wanted to buy a slice of quiche.

We had our own run-in with a strange Tesco policy the other night. My girlfriend Katie wanted to buy some non-alcoholic cider, but the self-service checkout refused the sale because it was apparently classed as an alcoholic drink which can't be sold after 10pm:

Now you might think this is a simple computer error. After all the product does clearly state ALCOHOL-FREE right there in big writing on the front label.

But no! The manager of the store got involved and told us that the product is correctly classed as an alcoholic drink because, according to the (very) small print on the back of the label, it can contain up to 0.05% alcohol. If he authorised the sale, he said, he would lose his job and be hit with a £5,000 fine.

What's really bizarre, though, is that I was able to go and pick up a can of Shandy Bass, which contains TEN TIMES as much alcohol (0.5%) and the self-service checkout was quite happy for me to pay my 49p and leave with the product:

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Kids, bright colours, trees, snow and mist!

Sun Jan 24th - 6:23pm

One of those rare times when I post a non-work picture just because I like it. Shot this frame today while doing event photography at the Aviemore sled dog rally.

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Awesome camera saves rubbish photographer

Fri Aug 1st - 5:04pm

I'm on my second 1D Mk3 now. The first one was proving to be too hit-and-miss with focus so I swapped it. The new one is actually an older serial number but so far, so good, so fingers crossed.

The incredible high-ISO performance proved itself again today with a shot that I made a real mess of, but was then able to rescue. I was doing this picture of a swimming lesson and, genius that I'm not, I decided to try it without flash. I had intended to shoot at 1/50s f/5.6 ISO 1600 but at some point I absent-mindedly changed the aperture to f/8. And to make matters worse, having metered for the general scene, I failed to realise that the place where I was going to do the picture was in fact a lot darker. Oh and to compound the problem even more I didn't check the LCD screen while doing the shot. So as the kids swam away afterwards and I finally checked the pictures, this is what I saw:

Can you imagine trying to recover an ISO 1600 image that is so under-exposed?

Well thanks to the Mk3 it was an easy save. Cranked the exposure on the raw file and added a bit of fake fill light. Job done. Almost. The instructors' purple shirts did get quite grainy so I applied some selective noise reduction, but apart from that the noise was fine and this is how the picture ended up:

The noise was certainly there, no doubt about that, but this ISO 1600 image from the Mk3, pushed about two stops, was comparable to a properly exposed ISO 800 image on the 1Ds or an ISO 1250 image on the 1D. Like most photo cock-ups this one was entirely down to the idiot behind the camera, but it's nice to know that the camera has got your back when you do make a mistake.

Here's a 100% crop from of the original image:

And here's the same crop from the finished version. Noise reduction was applied to the purple shirt but not to the skin or water.

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First few days with Canon 1D Mk3

Sat Jul 19th - 2:30am

I've been using the 1D Mk3 for a few days now and there are some features that are obvious highlights. For starters the new battery technology is extraordinary. It took 2 hours to give the battery a full first charge on Wednesday afternoon, and since then the camera has shot a football match, an accident scene, a portrait for a news item, and an entire wedding. That's a total of 1,824 frames plus lots of time using the review screen, and still the battery meter is showing 26%.

(Update: Add another 686 frames from another football match, some news pics, and a couple of gala girls playing with the camera's crazy high-speed 10fps mode. The battery is still showing 7% charge.)

Secondly the ISO performance is going to make life a lot easier. Here's an ISO 800 frame from yesterday's wedding that was under-exposed by approximately one stop due to bouncing the flash off the high, dark-coloured ceiling. But I shot it in raw, pushed it one stop, and added a bit of fill light. With my previous cameras that would have produced an image that needed extra work to do selective noise reduction in the shadow areas, but with the Mk3 the noise isn't even noticeable.

Incidentally the news profile pics that I mentioned, which were done for an item in Friday's Press & Journal, have since been licensed by two national newspapers. That nice income boost means that after only three days the Mk3 is already 1/4 of the way towards paying for itself.

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First few hours with Canon 1D Mk3

Thu Jul 17th - 1:55am

I'm now the happy (but broke) owner of a lovely new Canon 1D Mk3. I've been thinking of getting one for a while but with a wedding coming up on Friday I decided to take the plunge. I only had a few hours to practice with it today, just some test shots around the house and then off to photograph Tain Thistle vs Ross-shire Club. Favourite pic from the match:

Of course one of the main features of the Mk3 is its high-ISO performance and it's even better than I expected. This tree picture was shot at ISO 3200 and the blacks are immaculate, perfectly useable straight out of the camera.

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Eurodam maiden voyage

Mon Jul 14th - 10:27pm

Here's a spooky picture of Holland America's new cruise ship, Eurodam, visiting Invergordon during her maiden voyage. This is a 4-frame HDR.

Update: This photo ran nice and large on the BBC web site.

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With age comes cowardice

Sat Jun 28th - 6:03pm

Usually I want to be closer to the action than people will let me go, but I must admit that on this occasion I took another couple of steps back. And I'm glad I did! Still closer than the safety people though. This was very warm…

Mind you I think it was warmer for this guy…

And this photo, from another stunt, could have been a spectacular shot of a guy on fire. But where he's lying in the photo is exactly where I was standing a second earlier, so you can imagine why I moved back.

Another superb Tain Gala! The organisers surpass themselves every year. They even arranged good weather for today. I'll post some of the 'proper' photos once the paper's had chance to use them, or not.

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