Vivo en Bizkaia (y otros sitios tambien)

The weather continues to be rubbish here. This morning rain showers, then sunshine while I was wandering around, then more rain.

When the weather is like this (if i wanted sun all the time I would go to Spain) I have the luxury of catching up on things which I normally have no time to do.

This afternoon for instance I have been working on the intricacies of the castellano present conditional and then a little later the ins and outs of the photographic one third stop scale.

Unfortunately at some point I became confused and manage to under expose podria by two stops.

Oops. 

Can be found here on the Green Clean site.

This is by one specific manufacturer but applies to any other types of CCD cleaning products. A good overview of all the different methods can be found here.

I buy my CCD cleaning supplies and any other widgets I need from Speedgraphic.

You can also get swabs and cleaning fluid from Photographic Solutions. 

While we are about it this is how you check how much dust there really is on your camera sensor.

1. Set minimum aperture on your camera, something like f22 or more, take an OUT OF FOCUS shot of the the sky preferably with a telephoto lens.
2. Look at the resulting shot at 100% in Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever.
3. This will show you all the dust, hairs, abandoned cars, etc on your camera sensor.
4. If sensor is dirty then clean as per instructions with swabs / aerosol, brush, cellotape, industrial vacuum cleaner, brillo pad*
5. Repeat from 1 until sensor is clean.

I have just cleaned the sensor on my 1Ds with swabs and aerosol and it still has junk on it. Doesn't mean it is going to show up in the final image of course unless you are shooting out of focus shots of the sky at max aperture with a telephoto in which case you are stuffed.

*You do realise i was joking about the cellotape, industrial vacuum cleaner, brillo pad don't you? No? Oh well.

Several hours later...

Well. I don't know how much money I have spent on cleaning gear (swabs are around £5 a go) probably hundreds of pounds, but nothing seems to work that well. Have just spent the last half an hour using the Green Clean approach. Nice idea, got rid of the original problem, but then deposited loads of more junk straight from the dry swab.

So I have now resorted to looking at the CCD and trying to get the dust out with the hoover thingy. Ho hum. 

I have a growing collection of sky shots. 

Half an hour later...

At last!  A clean sensor! This is what I have done.

Hoover with Green Clean hoover.

Wet swab.

Dry swab.

Shoot and inspect check image.

Wet swab and dry swab again.

Hoover.

Shoot and inspect check image.

Hoover.

Shoot and inspect check image.

Hoover.

Shoot and inspect check image.

Search in my bag of cleaning stuff. Realise my trusty CO2 blaster has run out of CO2. This is not just any old CO2 blaster, bought it from Fixation and it is very good. However the cannisters run out fairly quickly and make sure you always fire a test squirt AWAY from the sensor first.

Resort to hand held blower - just a rubber bulb basically.

Have a good blow with that.

Shoot and inspect check image.

Clean! 

Note for the faint hearted: If you don't want to clean your own sensor and your mummy won't do it for you a professional repair shop like Fixation will do it for you for around £50 or so. 

So. One of the main reasons I came to Barcelona was to photograph the Torre Agbar, architects AJN and b720. So last night out I went at around 7.30pm to get the metro just in time for it to be lit up. Now according to the map in my Very Well Known Guidebook you can get the metro from Barceloneta, change at Ciutdella Vila Olympica and then change and go up to Glories which is right next to the tower. This would save me a VERY LONG WALK with my gear.

So I get the metro from Barceloneta to Ciutdella Vila Olympica and realise that the map in my Very Well Known Guidebook shows there is a connection but in the metro station there is a dashed line on the map - in other words one day there will be a connection but not yet. So I set off on a long walk. Fortunately I knew the way from a previous recce trek across town.

Got there, stood and looked at the tower with mouth open, then set to work. Of course as it was night time I needed to use a long exposure, about eight seconds, as I wanted to keep the ISO down to keep the quality up. I had brought my medium weight tripod with me just for this (and any other architectural night shots I wanted to do) which is pretty good but not as good as my heavyweight tripod which i perfect for this sort of thing. And not only is it ideal for photography but it is of a weight and design that you can use it for breaking doors down and stuff like that (I used to use the exact same model in a previous photographic career). But it is not the sort of thing you want to carry around, definitely a car job.

Anyway after a couple of hours I was done, and had just set off for a VERY LONG WALK back here when one of the numerous other people taking photographs of the tower stopped me and asked me about my tripod. Once we had got the language thing sorted and started speaking in English we had a good long chat. Which was nice as I haven't been doing much of that recently, much less over tea and hobknobs late at night. His name was Thierry, a Frenchman living in Manchester (obviously) and we had a good talk about all sorts of geeky photo things, and I showed him how my tilt and shift lens works. Told you it was a geeky chat.

After half an hour I set off on my VERY LONG WALK home which took about 40 minutes, fortunately my dead reckoning abilities were as good as ever. 

Then I checked my photos.

Oops.

All bar one slightly unsharp. Camera shake. Simple reason being that at exposures of eight seconds or more (some were up to 30 seconds) the camera was vibrating on the tripod. Silly me. Should have upped the ISO from my standard 100 to around 400 and so reduced the exposure time. No excuses apart from being very tired and not thinking straight.

So Thierry yes the verticals were vertical but not much use when the shots are unsharp! I hope yours were better :)

So tonight I went back and shot them again.

This time I got the metro again but from Barceloneta to Urquinaona then changed and up to Glories. No problem.

Tonight the first shot I took was the last one I took last night because last night I only took it two minutes before the lights were turned off on the tower. And I upped the ISO to 320, opened the aperture up a couple of stops and so managed to reduce the exposure time to between half to one second.

I spent some time lurking underneath the flyover where I got some nice shots.

Then I got the metro back here again as I did not fancy another VERY LONG WALK and have just had my dinner at around 1 am. Yesterday I only had a sandwich to eat. Not for any reason other than the fact that I did not feel very hungry, but then I never do when I am away. 

So anyway I have my shot. Which is all that matters.  

Oh and Thierry, the verticals are absolutely perfect. 

[ Geeky Photo Note. The reason I mention the verticals is this. When you use a normal camera with a normal lens to photograph a high building from the ground because you are pointing it up the verticals of the building are not vertical but at an angle. This is ok for a happy snap but not for an architectural photograph. So what you do, in my case, is use what is called a tilt and shift lens also known as a perspective correction lens. I have a Canon 28mm t/s lens which cost me around £1,200.

This is a very special lens which is in three parts. You can tilt the front bit of the lens to change the focus plane or you can shift the front and middle bit of the lens to change the focal point. So instead of pointing the lens up at the building you point it directly at it. Without any shift applied this means that the top of the building will be cut off. But then you apply shift, the focal point changes and the top of the building comes into view. The trick is to get the verticals absolutely vertical however. I use a little spirit level on the camera and then when I think the vertical plane of the camera sensor is perfectly aligned to the vertical plane of the building I swing the camera through the horizontal axis to check.

Understand all that? No? Better do some more studying then. A good starting point is the principle of Scheimpflug but the Wiki entry on perspective correction lenses has a good little diagram which explains the idea well.]

Out at nine this morning without main camera gear to just get the feel of this city. Think I did about 10km. From Barceloneta I walked along the seafront to Torre Mapfre, then up to Sagrada Familia then along Avenue Diagonal to Placa de Tuan then dropped down into El Barri Gòtic then back down to Barceloneta.

Got in very tired and then went back out again to El Barri Gòtic in search of some decent light, it has been overcast all morning. Despite loitering for an hour or two the sun was not going to play the game so I walked back here again.

At which point the sun came out. And is out now.

All morning I wanted a cafe con leche but for some reason I hesistated at every bar I passed. Finally on my second trip out, while waiting for the light to fall on a specific balcony, I noticed a Basque bar! So went in there. It was OK but not the same as Euskadi. Decent pintxos though.

Now am, apart from writing this, waiting for the mercado to open so I can go and buy some food and cook some dinner. I know I should be out again this evening but I am pretty tired. But the light waits for no one. 

Here is a list of my basic gear which needs to fit in one bag of airline carry on dimensions  - 56 cm  x 45 cm x 25 cm.

This gear never goes in the hold of an aircraft as I always need to know that I can walk off a plane and work even if my personal gear goes adrift.

My luggage list for this trip will be:

1 x camera rucksack (Tenba Shootout Medium)

1 x Samsonite suitcase with rest of my gear and clothes.

1 x tripod bag containing Manfrotto O55MF4 magfibre tripod (fantastic piece of kit) and Manfrotto 029 pan and tilt head.

In the rucksack goes the following:

1 x Canon 1Ds camera body

1 x Canon 1D Mk2 camera body

1 x Canon 300 4 IS telelphoto lens

1 x Canon tele converter (x2)

1 x Canon 70-200 2.8 L USM lens

1 x Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5 L lens (TS stands for tilt and shift, its mainly for buildings mainly).

1 x Canon 24-70mm f2.8 lens

1 x Canon 16-35 2.8 L USM lens 

2 x Speedlite 580EX flash guns equipped with Omnibounce Stofen diffusers.

4 x rechargeable batteries for cameras 

1 x recharger unit for batteries

8 x Sandisk 2Gb CF cards

1 x Apple Macbook Pro + assorted leads and, very important, CF card reader.

Notebook, pens, maps, basic cleaning gear, basic first aid kit, small torch.

I am also taking two Lacie 250 Gb external drives with me. These will go in my suitcase on the way out but on the way back when they are full of very valuable images they will be in my pocket!

Aim is to use one of the Lacies as a main external storage unit and the other as a mirror.

Other stuff which will go in my hold luggage will be things like remote lead for camera, Quantum Turbo Pro Compact flash unit, ND filters, main cleaning kit, spare flash gun, bag full of chargers and cables.   

Enough photo geek talk. 

Oh and probably my macro lens oh and my point and shoot Canon G6 or whatever its called. 

And my little cheapo Canon 50mm 1.8 lens which is fun to use. 

Oh and several rolls of insulating tape. 

And my beloved Domke F2 camera bag is resident in Bilbao at the moment, entrusted to the tender care of CC who has informed me she will deliver it to me anywhere in Spain or PV at her own expense. Bless! 

As some of you may have noticed the one thing I have never actually talked about on this blog is photography.

This is odd as the main reason for selling my house and moving away was to take photographs.

So I thought it was time I started.

Warm tea or wet storm?

As ever this is written purely for my own benefit, although i hope that others may find it useful and maybe even amusing too. Since returning from Euskal Herria to Brighton I have hardly taken any photographs, with the exception of some of friends and a morning by the London Embankment (photo to follow later).

At the moment I want to be back in Bilbao or Plenzia or Donosti but i can't. I also want to start taking more photographs in black and white. Which I can.

And as the weather here in England is so utterly miserable that is maybe quite appropriate. Tomorrow it is forecast to be extremely windy here (55mph) and so I might put my Goretex on, sling my camera bag over my shoulder and stride out into the weather to get some moody black and white shots of the seas crashing against the coast, glorying in the power of the elements as I strive to capture the essence of nature.

Or, I might stay in the warm and drink tea.

On the scales at midnight 

At the moment I have two Canons as my main cameras, a 1DS and a 1DMk2, both of which are very good bits of kit and are also extremely heavy. Add a couple of lenses in addition to the ones on each camera, a flashgun or two, a couple of spare batteries, cleaning gear, notebook (a paper one dummy, not a computer) and the weight mounts up. Someone told me a while back that optical glass is the same weight as concrete, which makes sense when you think about it. Concrete blocks don't cost between £1,000 and £2,000 a go though.

While I was away in Euskadi I kept on meaning to actually weigh my camera bag one day just out of interest and I have just got round to it! Putting my bag with basic gear on the scales it is 12kg, or just under 26 pounds, which is vaguely what i thought it would be. Try wandering around with that all day.

The reason this stuff is heavy is because professional gear is built to withstand a lot of abuse. The cameras and lenses are hermetically sealed to stop water coming in (not if you drop them in the sea though, i know because i did it) and are made of solid metal. When I work in crowds I am always wary of knocking small children round the head with my cameras as they, the cameras not the children, hang at around child head height and a glancing blow can hurt a kid (I know because I have done it).

Apart from that and various bells and whistles and a higher frame rate on continuous there is not a lot of difference between the gear I use and the semi-pro stuff you see. It just costs less and weighs less. And would not last more than about five minutes if it was worked hard.

If there is one thing that annoys me it is people who treat their cameras like they are precious china vases. Cameras are tools, nothing more. Tools like a shovel or a computer or a  can opener. Slightly more expensive that a can opener maybe but still tools.  Look after them, clean them,  get them serviced on a regular basis but remember their only purpose is to take photographs. Mine are worn down to the bare metal in places, simply because they have been used a lot, I think each body has done around 100,000 + frames each . So what? As long as they keep working that's all I care about.

The stunned lemur 

With the dodgy wrist which makes picking up a cup of tea painful (no exaggeration) I have often wished that someone would make a lighter camera for professional photographers.  Maybe a rangefinder camera? Maybe someone like Leica?

Now Leica made the 35mm film format the standard format and have been producing rangefinder film cameras for years. But, like many other companies, showed all the agility and business sense of a stunned lemur when it came to making a good digital rangefinder. But now it looks like they have done it with a camera called the M8 - although they did manage to release the first version with a couple of huge flaws. Duh. This problem was in fact discovered by at least one 'reviewer' who decided to not mention it in his review. What? Shoddy behaviour at best, but then what do expect if you read things on the Wibbly Wobbly Web.

Which might leave you thinking "What on earth is a rangefinder camera and what is different between that and the Canon gear you use now?" 

Well bear with me and I will explain.

Unless I can't be bothered in which case I might just drink more tea.