CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Over the past couple of months during the Coronavirus lockdown here in Scotland I have been taking a long walk around Belhaven and Dunbar as part of my daily exercise and my iPhone has been my camera of choice during this time.   Since buying the iPhone 11 at the beginning March I have been highly impressed with the quality of the images and video and while it will never replace my Fujifilm X Series system, it means I have a high quality camera in my pocket at all times. To improve the flexibility of the iPhone I bought into the Moment lens system.   QUALITY LENSES Moment are a Seattle based company producing, arguably, the world's best mobile phone lenses.  There are plenty of options to add addition lens options to your mobile phone camera but a lot are cheap plastic or glass that produce low quality results.   On the other hand Moment lenses are proper optical glass in a metal housing that fit into a Moment phone case with a bayonet mount for security....

Belhaven Bridge Yesterday I received a parcel with a Fujifilm X-T10 and a Fujinon XF16mm f1.4 lens which I will be testing over the next three weeks.  After unboxing and setting up the various menus on the camera I decided to take it down to Belhaven Beach for a quick test run to see how the smaller brother to Fujifilm's flagship X-T1 compares. Fujifilm X-T10 with XF16mm f1.4R WR My first impression was how small the X-T10 is.  Noticeably smaller than the X-T1 (and X-Pro1, which seems like a giant camera next to the X-T10) and about the same size as, if not actually smaller than, the grand daddy of the X-Series line, the X100.   Left to Right - Body Size Comparison X100, X-T1, X-T10, X-Pro1 Spot the size difference - X100 and the X-T10 I will go into more detail on the specs of the X-T10 on a later blog as this is just about my initial impressions having just received the camera from Fujifilm UK but the controls are in a familiar layout,...

We live in Kirk Park in Dunbar and a Kirk is another name for a Church in Scotland.  Belhaven Parish church is at the end of our road, literally just 30 metres from our house. When walking back to the house earlier in the week, the sun was shining off the sandstone steeple and with  the grey tiles, the green leaves and the blue sky, it made for an image full of colour and textures.

With the forecast for the Northern Lights over southern Scotland looking promising and with clear skies I decided to walk out to Belhaven Bay to see if I could capture this amazing light show.  However lady luck wasn't with me and the Aurora didn't appear. But my efforts weren't a complete 'bust' as the starfield above Belhaven Bay was amazing and so I set the XT1 on the tripod and set about capturing the scene. Photographing at night is a challenge in itself, especially with an electronic view finder (EVF) as everything is dark.  I did heed my own advice and took a torch with me to check the settings and to focus I set it to manual and infinity on the 10-24mm. The other issue is the movement of the earth. Anything above 20 seconds and the stars will blur.  So to capture the stars the ISO had to be set to 3200 and the exposure around 20s @ f4. For the 'star trails' I dropped the ISO back to 200 and the aperture to f11 to give me an exposure ...

Some dramatic light through the clouds during a walk on the beach at Tyninghame produced the perfect combination for the first black and white images of 2015.   The first shot above was taken using the Fujifilm X-T1 and the Fujinon 18mm f2 lens looking back along the beach towards the Lammermuir Hills in the distance.  The tide was out leaving the rocks exposed on the shoreline, which is a perfect feeding ground for the many species of wading birds. The next two shots were taken on the X-T1 with the 55-200mm zoom.  The first is of one of the many pine trees that line the shore at the edge of Tyninghame woods. The final image is looking east across Belhaven Bay of Dunbar in the distance with Dunbar Castle and the Leisure Centre on the left and Winterfield on the right above Belhaven Beach. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS...

I missed posting an image yesterday and I apologise for this but I have been working on updating the MacLean Photographic website for a new project that I will be launching this weekend (all will be revealed soon). This was the scene this morning from the beach at Belhaven Bay where the sun broke through the low cloud cover for a little while but out to sea the black clouds were gathering.  This time of year is excellent for landscape photography when the sun is low in the sky for most of the day (when it appears of course). The image was taken looking east along the beach back towards Dunbar and Winterfield golf course using the Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF18mm f2 lens.

One of the functions on the Fujifilm X-T1 that I have been meaning to try out, but hadn't found the time until this morning, was the 'Interval Timer Shooting' to produce a timelapse video. I headed down to the bridge at Belhaven Bay at High Tide and set the camera to shoot an image every 10 second for 180 shots to capture the receding tide around the bridge. As the tide went out people were able use the bridge to access the beach on the far side.  I did three sets of 180 shots to produce the following video on the Fujinon XF35mm and XF55-200mm f3.5/4.8 lenses. I found the   'Interval Timer Shooting' function very easy to use.  I did set the camera to shoot Fine JPEG only (I usually shoot JPEG + RAW) as the number of images that were going to be produced during the sequence was going to exceed the capacity of the 16mb card if I shot RAW files. I am now going to use the  'Interval Timer Shooting' function to record some other areas around Du...

The upshot of all the glorious weather we are experiencing in Scotland (and the rest of the UK) is we have been getting a regular dose of great sunsets.  The local beach at Belhaven is just a short 5-minutes walk from our house in Dunbar and when the sun starts to set behind some interesting clouds it is time to grab the camera bag and tripod and head down the path to the bay. With the tide having just gone out, the beach was left with lots of standing water near the edge which provided me with the perfect reflection for the skyscape.  The receding tide had also sculpted the sand into ridges which also provided a great foreground for some of the images.   Here is the latest batch of images from the amazing sunset the other night - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are he...

Yesterday the weather in East Lothian was very tropical for Scotland, with 24 degrees and bright sunshine, however just off the North Sea coastline the sea fog continued to linger.  By the afternoon most of the fog had cleared but some of it still lingered, producing some beautiful effects as the sun started to set. I headed down to the beach below Winterfield Golf Course to capture the sunset and the effects of the fog around the base of Bass Rock out in the Firth of Forth.  A passing container ship could also be seen passing on its way out into the North Sea, looking like a ghost ship in the mist. The sun continued to set, producing some magnificent orange and red reflections before turning to purples and blues as the sun sank below the horizon.   Images taken on the Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF55-200mm f3.5/f4.8R OIS with a Lee 0.9 ND Soft grad and for some of the images a Lee 10x ND 'Big Stopper' -----------------------------------------...

I know I have said this before on this blog but sometimes the most mundane of objects can make a great photographic subject.   This post is one of several that line the beach at Belhaven Bay and over the years has become weathered and worn.   I find these sorts of objects fascinating and worthy of a few frames, especially if they provide a focal point in the larger landscape.  With the broken clouds above the beach and the retreating tide leaving plenty of standing water which acted like a mirror, I set about capturing a set of images using the post as the focal point.  These three are my favourites from the set.  Images taken on aFujifilm X-T1 + Fujinon XF10-24mm f4R OIS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ---------...

After we returned from England on Thursday evening we went for a walk down to Belhaven Bay to walk on the beach to clear away the cobwebs from the 6 hour drive back to Scotland. We took our usual route down Back Road past Winterfield Golf Course and as we reached the bottom of the hill we were greeted by this spectacular display of wild flowers next to the road.   Using the Fujifilm X-T1 with the 10-24mm or 55-200mm Fujinon zooms I captured these images of the colourful display. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR ...