Surf Boat competition

 It was a round of the Central Coast Surf Life Saving Clubs boat competition today at Terrigal Beach. I saw the competition being set up when I went down for my coffee at 7.00 am but unfortunately could not get down to see it until it was about to wrap up late morning.

It has again been very hot and very humid. I walked down to the beach with my Leica SL2 fitted with the Lumix Pro f2,8 70-200mm lens coupled to the Lumix 2x converter giving me effectively a f5.6 140-400mm lens. It's a really heavyweight combo. I soon realised that the 2x converter was unnecessary. The 70--200mm lens alone would have been adequate, but standing on a sandy beach in full sun is not a good place to start coupling and uncoupling lenses.

I just hit the beach as the last race was starting so I only manged to grab two shots. I would have liked to have had more time, but it is what it is and I could not have spent any longer standing on the beach in the sun anyway-it was ferocious.

Today the sea was very smooth. When there is medium or big surf the starts of these competitions are more spectacular however I'm pleased with these two shots and I was not stricken with heatstroke so I really cannot complain.

 

A little monochrome

 I've been in two minds about monochrome, aka black and white, photography for years. Usually I'm not enthusiastic and consider many examples of it as pretentious but recently I've become more appreciative. 

I've seen the monochrome photos in recent photobooks by Leica Ambassadors Alan Schiller and Phil Penman and the superb book, Paris Amour, by David Turnley. Also I've seen some outstanding monochrome photos taken by one of the participants of the Leica Photo journey in Morocco which I went on last October.

I have used Nix Silver EFX software to convert colour images to monochrome for many years but with my enthusiasm for this branch of photography rekindled I recently decided to invest in the latest, and much enhanced ,edition of the software, now badged as the DoX collection, to see what I can do with it. 

I've only just installed it so it's early days in my mastering of it but here are three examples I've converted today as I explored its potential. 

The top photo of granddaughter, Poppy, studying for her HSC exams was a neutral conversion in terms of the tone of the photo. The wedding party in Myanmar has warmer tones and the portrait is more silver in tone.

 

My first photo

 

In the past 65 years I have taken tens of thousands of photos. Indeed it may well be hundreds of thousands of photos and many have been discarded over the years but surprisingly I still have the first photo I took when I acquired my first camera in 1960. 

Back then I did a paperound, getting out of bed at an obscene early hour, often in the wet and cold -it was England -to earn money to buy that camera. A paperound involved carrying a heavy bag of newspapers round local streets delivering the right papers to the right houses. In those days there were quite a few different daily papers and weekly magazines and all hell broke loose if I inadvertantly posted the salacious and titillating News of the World through Mr Blunt's letterbox when he and his good lady wife, the rector's sister, were looking forward to some serious reading in the Sunday Times.

The best part of the round was at Xmas when I collected tips. Most householders were generous and for the few scrooges it was soon payback time when, quite inadvertantly, their papers, somehow, were left hanging half out of their letterboxes on a very wet morning. How unfortunate. Instant papier mache.

The camera I purchased with that hard earned cash was a 35mm Halina 35X. It looked somewhat like a Leica rangefinder and it even had a red dot on the front. It said it was made in Hong Kong but it was most likely made in China. The reason for the labelling was that Hong Kong was still a British colony then and so imports from there attracted a lower rate of duty. Clever people these Chinese.

I had wanted to buy an Agfa Sillete or a very nice German camera called an AretteA but both were out of my price range and I had to buy a lightmeter as well as the camera.  So instead, I reluctantly opted for the newly released Halina and to my surprise it was surprisingly good for its time and price. I have read that the lens glass was made by Pilkington in the UK but who knows? Sounds unlikely to me.

I used the Halina for about 4 years and then sold it to a friend and used the proceeds to buy an East German Exa but that's another story. 

 I know it is the first photo because there is some orange light seepage on the edge of the frame. The reason for this is that my parents gave me a present of a cassette of Kodachrome which cost very serious money and I was very anxious to squeeze as many shots as possible onto the film. I could not wait to try the camera and what better location than my home?

The house looks so prim and neat in the photo. 

Below it, through the wonders of Google Streetview, is it as it looks when the Google man drove past in recent times. The house has been extended. The front garden is a parking space. It looks sad. 

 

I am glad I have kept that first photo. When I was in the UK last year I did consider taking a train to Ewell West station to take a look at the house where I spent most of my childhood. I'm now glad I didn't. I would have been very disappointed.

 

"The caravan moves on"

 

Warren

A portrait of my good friend Warren crafting some lightweight door handles for his Porsche in his workshop. I was really surprised to find that this photo was taken in 2016.  Warren has aged well since then and is still very much into making things however he has moved house so the wotrkshop has gone and so has the Porsche.

And so has the camera I used to take the photo-a Sony a7 -the original model. From the first day I acquired it disliked using it. My principal objection was the long and complex menu system. It was/is a camera for computer nerds not photographers. The data does not show the lens so it was probably taken with a legacy Minolta lens fitted to the camera with an adapter.

Certainly the quality of the photo is excellent but that did not convince me to persist with the Sony. I soon sold it-at a loss -and used the funds to buy a Leica X Vario -a camera which, on paper, was much inferior to the Sony but which has a very straightforward and usable menu system and a superb lens which I was really happy using.

To be fair many photographers love the Sony a7 cameras but also many feel the same way about the complex menus as I do. Each to their own.

 

A beautiful day in California

 I found this photo whilst searching through my Lightroom library for another photo. It was taken in May 2016 in a small town, Point Reyes Station, on the coast road north of San Francisco.

We had flown to the US for a short trip taking advantage of a very good deal on flights across the Pacific.  I most definitely would not be taking advantage of such an offer today which is a pity as there so much about the US that we appreciated and, indeed, enjoyed.

We hired a car in LA and over a few days drove up the coast road to San Francisco where we stayed in Sausolito which we really liked. It was on day trip from there that we came upon Point Reyes Station one beautiful Saturday morning.

A market was in full swing when I came across this local character.  The photograph was taken with my little 12mp Leica X1 and it is a stunner. The sharpness and color rendition is so good it could easily be passed off as having been taken with a late model Leica with a current, mega costly lens. See previous story.

Leica X1 photo 1/400th sec at f5.6 ISO 100.