CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

After leaving Rannoch Moor we headed south again on the A82 to Bridge of Orchy before turning right on the B8074 down Glen Orchy.  This single track road runs parallel with the River Orchy as it passes down the glen with steep mountain ridges on either side.  Lower down the woods cover the slopes but further up the trees give way to open mountain tops which were covered in snow. The contrast between the dark green trees and the snow topped mountains made for some great patterns to photograph. The River Orchy drops down through a series of rapids and waterfalls and we stopped a couple of times to get some images.  However, because the winter sun was is low in the sky at this time of year, the sunlight didn't reach the bottom of Glen Orchy so the light was a little flat.  We also came across a herd of cows in a snowy field, some Highland cattle and some of another breed that I couldn't identify. At the bottom of Glen Orchy ...

With the weather forecast of a clear day with scattered clouds after recent heavy snowfalls had us heading into the Highlands of Scotland.  We arrived before dawn at Rannoch Moor with deep snow drifts and frozen lochs presenting us with a beautiful wintry scene to photograph. A quick recce to find the best, and safe, vantage point before setting the Fuji X-T1 on the Manfrotto 190 tripod in position facing west away from the sunrise towards the mountains.   While I waited for the sun to appear I captured the shot above on the 35mm f1.4 with a 20 second exposure of scene before the dawn. I then switched to the 10-24mm wide angle zoom to give me a little more flexibility and a Lee 0.6 (2 stop) ND grad in place in preparation for the sunrise.   I put the 56mm f1.2 on the X-Pro1 and then switched to the 55-200mm to give me some extra pulling power once the sun came up.  This allowed me to get some close up shots of the sunlight hitting the ridges of t...

Last December I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S3 mobile phone to the new Galaxy S5.  I have been an advocate of mobile phone cameras and have noticed how casual photographers have been shunning traditional compact cameras and other offerings at the low end of the camera market because the quality of the images from phone cameras have improved so much over the past few years. I have done some blogs on this subject (Galaxy S3 HERE and Apple iPhone 4S HERE ) and today I decided to try out the camera on the S5 during a walk on Tyninghame beach this afternoon.  I took along the Fujifilm X100 as a quality comparison. The camera on the S5 produces an image that is 5212 x 2988 pixels (16mp) in 16:9 format or 3984 x 2988 (12mp) in the more traditional 4:3 format.  This compares to the 16mp Fujifilm X-T1, with its much larger APS-C sensor, file size of 4896 x 3264 and the 12mp X100s (also APS-C sensor) 4288 x 2848. The Galaxy S5 has plenty of functions for the user to choose f...