CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

The combination of high tide, a choppy sea and beautiful evening light had me grabbing the camera bag and tripod and I headed down to Belhaven Bay, just a short 5 minute walk from my front door. This shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 fitted with the XF16-55mm f2.8, a Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad and Lee 10x 'Big Stopper' ND filters.  The camera was placed on a Manfrotto 190 tripod and the image composed with bridge in the bottom left hand corner and the tripod raised so the top of the bridge was clear of the dark background. The final exposure time was 251 seconds at f8 with the ISO set at 200. The final image is more or less as it came out of the camera except for tweaks to the exposure, contrast and clarity in Photoshop. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping ...

The weather here in East Lothian has been glorious over the past week, it is almost as if summer has finally decided to make a late appearance just before winter hits Scotland.  I'm a 'glass-is-half-full' type of guy so have made the most of this beautiful weather. The last two nights I have been taking the short walk over to Winterfield Golf Course to catch the light after the sun has dipped below the horizon to the west.  Because the tide has been high at sunset the light hitting the surface of the water has contrasted nicely with the beach and the land and the images have been very monochrome.  Monochrome is usually associated with black and white images but in this instance I use it in the context of 'one colour'. The Belhaven footbridge provided a very nicely foreground subject for the images of the bay, and, as usual, there were a lot of people down there taking images of the bridge.   With the Fujifilm X-T1 and the XF50-140mm f2.8 fitted to the Man...

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,...

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...

It has been a long 9 days for the 24 Hours of Le Mans event and, while it has been very successful and the race was one of the best in many years, it is now time to head home to Dunbar.   This is a shot of Belhaven Bay, which is a short 5 minute walk from our home, that I took on the last evening before I flew to France.   This image is a good reminder that while I have one of the best jobs that allows me to travel the world and see some fantastic places, it is always good to be going home.  I am certainly looking forward to walking on that beach tomorrow morning. image taken on a Fujifilm X-T1 + Fujinon XF18mm f2R -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ...

I have posted several shots of the Bridge to No Where at Belhaven Bay since we moved to Dunbar at the end of 2013.  This is the view from the top of the bridge looking down Biel Water to the sea at Belhaven Bay. The sky earlier today was a myriad of different grey tones and this panaoramic image was converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro2 to give you an idea of the scene at Belhaven this lunchtime. Image taken on a Fujifilm X100 and 23mm f2 lens - four shot panoramic -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRA...

For some weeks now I have been planning a shot of the Bridge to No Where at Belhaven Bay that required high tide to coincide with dawn and for the weather to be kind.  Keeping an eye on the weather forecast, and with a high tide at 7:09am, yesterday morning look to be a good bet to head down to the bridge. Well the weather gods were smiling and despite a short, sharp shower of rain that produced a rainbow, the sunrise provided the perfect conditions to get the shots I had visualised in my head. Images 1 and 2 were taken on a Nikon D800 and Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 lens - Lee 10x ND 'Big Stopper' and 0.6 ND Soft Grad filters. Image 3 was taken on a Nikon D800 and Nikon 50mm f1.4 lens - Lee 10x ND 'Big Stopper' and 0.6 ND Soft Grad filters.    Image 4 was taken on a Fujifilm X-Pro1 and Fujinon 14mm f2.8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING ...

The Bridge to No Where across Biel Water in Belhaven Bay is proving to be a popular subject for my camera lens at the moment as it is only a 5 minute walk down to the bay from our house in Dunbar. This is another image from the other evening and was shot with the Fuji X-Pro1 and 60mm f2.4 lens as the sun was setting behind the Lammermuir Hills. The image was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and Fujinon 60mm f2.4 lens - 1/1400 @ f8 ISO400 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY...

Last night I took six long exposure images of the bridge at Belhaven Bay by moonlight and I was very pleased the result ( CLICK HERE to see the image).   However, while I always try to get things exposed correctly in the camera, I view an image as a starting point and not the end product.  I usually like use the RAW file and manipulate the image in Lightroom or Photoshop to see if I can get a better or more pleasing result. Well the image above was manipulated in PSE11 and then converted in NIK Analogue Efex to give a cooler, moon lit, feeling to the image and I think this shot works better than yesterday's image The image was shot on a Nikon D800 and 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S lens and the exposure was 177 seconds at f8 and ISO200 (a tripod and remote release was also used).   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLI...

This is the bridge at Belhaven Bay and at high tide both sides of the bridge is cut off so it appears to be a bridge to no where.  This evening I had just missed high tide but the moon came out so I decided to go down and capture some images of the bridge by moonlight.  A 150 second long exposure resulted in this image. The shot was taken on the Nikon D800 and the Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S lens using a tripod to keep everything steady in the strong breeze that was blowing across the beach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PRO...

With less than 24 hours before heading off on my travels again we decided to go and get some fresh sea air after being cooped up on a plane from New York for 8 hours. At Belhaven Bay there is a bridge that appears to go no where and at high tide it sits in the middle of the water.  At low tide the bridge allows visitors to get across to the large beach on the otherside and to the John Muir Country Park. Image taken on a Fujifilm Finepix X100 and Fujinon 19mm f2 lens (WCL-X100 fitted) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps support this blog - thank you for helping ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PH...