Although I have some reservations about using my Olympus Micro-Four Thirds (MFT) cameras for landscapes, one area where they come into their own is fast action photography like motor sports. The sensor on all MFT cameras is just one quarter the size of a so-called full frame camera, and although they can still deliver file sizes based on up to 20Mpx, the individual pixels are so-much smaller, so suffer from noise in low light or high contrast situations and this does limit things somewhat, in my opinion. MFT cameras do have a couple of particular advantages though, especially for action photography – the small sensor means that a given focal length lens is equivalent to a lens twice as ‘long’ as one fitted to a full frame camera, and for any given aperture will have a much greater depth of focus. So, in practical terms, the same ‘spec’ lens on an MFT camera will bring things in much closer, and more of the subject will be in focus.
My camera, the Olympus E-M1 mk2, has one other killer feature – ProCapture. Whereas most cameras will focus on the subject when you half press the shutter, and then take one or more photos when you fully press it, Pro Capture starts recording as SOON as you half press the shutter, and ‘buffers’ or keeps the last 12 shots in its memory together with all those after you press the shutter, and these are then written to the memory card. So if you are shooting at one of the lower speeds, like 5 frames a second, you will get a couple of seconds worth of images BEFORE you make that final press of the shutter. How many times have we been looking through the viewfinder waiting for action to happen, like a bird taking off, but by the time we react to the movement, the bird has gone. This camera lets you go back in time!
So last weekend I spent some time at a club motor race meeting at Oulton Park in Cheshire with those nice folks from Olympus UK Events. I already had my E-M1ii of course but was pleased to try both a 40-150mm Pro lens, and the 300mm f4 Pro lens (they were loaning out cameras too if anyone wanted to try those). A great opportunity to ‘try before you buy’ given that the 300mm lens is around £2000 to buy. Also on hand to help were Lewis Speight, one of the technical gurus from Olympus UK, and Mike Inkley, a pro sports photographer. So off we went trackside to record the cars that were racing that day – some modern sports/touring cars, but some classic sports cars too.
Lets just say that the equipment we were using was amazing – the ability to fill the frame and focus on fast moving cars from the other side of the safety barrier, and record bursts of up to 40 shots as the cars went past or crested the top of the hill at Lodge Corner! I did however fill a complete memory card during my morning session – over 3000 images – so needless to say sorting through these and picking the best from each sequence took some time!
Suffice it to say, I would thoroughly recommend this setup for sport photography…
We had booked a couple of nights at Bunchrew House Hotel, just outside Inverness, as we had missed Inverness out at the start of our trip. Turned out to be a very good choice – excellent food, comfortable room, great service etc, but the highlight was the choice of gins in the bar.
of tonic, all served with the recommended garnishes etc. With a couple of other pre and post dinner drinks over the two days, I think that took my tally of new gins for the trip up to about 15… Great views from the hotel over the Beauly Firth, including a spectacular sunset.
if not particularly high falls.
40metres – talk about scary! The whole structure was shaking (or was it just me?) Absolutely incredible, and there are several other falls all coming into the same point, before the river rushes on. If you’ve got time, you can follow a path all the way to the base of the falls, but when in full flow (as they were when we were there) the spray will soak anyone on the path.
And so down through Fort William and into Glencoe with a brief side trip along Glen Etive in search of more deer (no luck, just some crazy kayakers shooting the rapids).
Tongue Hotel turned out to be a good choice (to be fair there aren’t many hotels around here anyway!) – one of our fellow guests was BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, so we figured if it was ok for him, then it was ok for us. A (relatively) early start next morning as we had to be in Dunnet Bay by 11am for our pre-booked tour of the Dunnett Bay Distillery – home of Rock Rose, one of our favourite gins. Our tour (we were the only ones there) took almost an hour and a half, and we learned so much about the gin process, helped along by sampling several of their products! Definitely worth a stop if you are passing that way, and well worth the £12 pp cost.
We briefly stopped at the Castle of Mey, one time summer holiday home of the Queen Mother – it was pretty busy there and we only needed to use the loo, so onward… Interestingly, the whole physical geography changed along here – although there were cliffs all along the coastline, just inland it was pretty flat, and the harsh gorse and heather landscape changed to mostly pasture.
An amazing day, and one that completely surpassed our expectations. Roll on tomorrow, and Part 2!
Popped along last week to the 1940s Festival held in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. For two days over the weekend, the town embraced the look, sounds and even the smells of the 1940s, with many different displays, and hundreds of people dressed in period clothes. There were displays of wartime foods and rations, fighting vehicles including armoured cars and jeeps, and of course soldiers, sailors and airmen from Germany, France, Canada and the UK. There was street dancing to ‘Glenn Miller’ style bands, a battle re-enactment and even a ball on the Saturday night (not that I stayed for that!)
There were some excellent photo opportunities, and it was great to meet up with friends and customers of 
Our little village in France (Montréal, near Carcassonne, in the South West) has a history dating back over 1000 years to Cathar times, and has a pretty eclectic architectural heritage. The Collégiale, or main church, dates back to the late 13th century, although it is thought a primitive church existed here several hundred years before that. Much of the surrounding village was burned to the ground by the Black Prince in 1355, and the next 400 years saw the village repeatedly attacked as a consequence of the religious strife that dominated this part of France. As a result, many of the older houses in the village date back to the 17th and 18th centuries and these sit alongside houses that have been modernised since, often in a haphazard fashion. There are barely a handful of completely new houses in the main part of the village – all the new development has been carried out further afield.
The somewhat diverse architectural styles in the village are reflected in the doors – not just to the Collégiale and the grand houses in the village centre, but all the smaller houses too. Every time I walk around the village I marvel at the sheer variety of styles of door on show, so for a bit of fun decided to do a mini photo project, recording as many of the different doors as I could. Camera used was (as it often is these days) the Fujifilm X-T10, this time with the 18-55mm zoom. No special technique here – just walk up, select a nice view of the door/doorway – often from the side as the streets are too narrow in some cases to use even the 18mm front-on. Photos are all RAW images, imported into Lightroom with a little ‘punch’ added, and some judicious cropping and further adjustment where needed. Here are a few of my favourites from my mini-project.
Encouraged by attending a couple of excellent workshops and photo walks with 
Shooting at street markets in France is a case in point – French people, in my experience, are not at all keen on candid photos. Whether its a national sense of privacy, or because some of the traders at the markets are working ‘on the black’, I don’t know, but be prepared for some hostility if you are seen overtly photographing them!
I took this rig out this weekend to shoot the lively Saturday market in Revel in the 
Nigel Young 