David de Groot's blog

Well I've finally made it happen.

Gallery Showing

Six of my landscapes are printed large and on display at the Esk Information Centre, Esk, Queensland.

Esk Information Centre

So if you happen to be in the south east of Queensland and would like a nice drive in the country, pop out to Esk and drop in at the information centre (east end of town) to have a peek.

The shots chosen were:

Blue Arch

Comet McNaught

Lars Anderson House

Sunrise over Wivenhoe

Whirlpool

Stumps

(I have no idea how to make these images sit in a row rather than a column, if anyone knows, speak up)

Yesterday while rumaging through some boxes (nominally unpacking), I came across a pair of Lea's old 110 format cameras. One is a cheapy "Hanimex 110 . electonic flash" model but the other is somewhat more interesting, a "Minolta WeatherMatic A", waterproof camera.

Minolta Weathermatic A

I've shoved a battery in it and the flash works, but I have no 110 film cartidges. Anyone know a good place around Brisbane to source some (I'll take expired, in fact I'd prefer expired film)  ?

Well after six years our aging HP flatbed scanner is rapidly showing signs of imminent death.

Thus I'll likely be in the market for a new one quite shortly. So, what I'm after is recommendations :)

Here's what I need:

• A4 sized document scan in a flatbed configuration

• 35mm and maybe larger negative scanning abilities

• High resolution for the negative scanner, preferrably multipass, 24 bit colour minimum

• Must work with Windows AND Mac (OS X 10.4)

Added bonuses would be:

• Works in Linux

• Networkable  (this would be very very handy)

• Automatic document feeder

• Duplex scanning

Those last two are just pure icing, it'd be nice, but I'm not going to pay a small fortune that could be better spent on camera gear for them :)

So with much fanfare (well ok, not that much really) I hereby release my new Portfolio into the wild.

I've still yet to decide on a proper name (suggestions welcome) which will dictate the eventual domain it lives on, but for now, here it is.

www.degrootphotography.com.au

All comments welcome.

Anyone else noticed that the 35mm equivalence value displayed by ipernity for Canon APS-C dSLRs (300d, 350d, 400d, 10d, 20d, 30d, 40d) appears to have the wrong multiplier.

The crop multiplier for these models is 1.6x, yet the values shown imply a multiplier of 4.Y x  where Y varies considerably.

It's not really a big deal, just odd.

After some nudging from various people (Hi Nicole!), I've decided to do something with my photos and as such I'm giving RedBubble a try.

At the moment I've only got a few photos up there for sale, but if anyone feels they might want to purchase one that's not up there, let me know and I'll post it, or we can come to some other agreement.

So this weekend a photographer friend of mine (Xenedis aka Johnno) is coming to Brisbane.

Conveniently, on the Friday night is Mr Magoo's exhibition, Paradigm Shift:

See flyer here.

So if anyone wants to come along and meet, and also see some pretty amazing photographic work in print, we'll be at:

440 Upper Edward St

Spring Hill

at about 6:30pm on the 7th of September.

Also over the weekend Johnno is available and keen to have people show him around Brisbane to see and photograph interesting things and people. Let me know if you're interested and available or see the Meetup thread hosted on flickr here.

Two coming attractions to the skies around Brisbane...

If I were paranoid, I'd think Queensland Rail had it in for me.

Thanks to Shaun's dillergent efforts, we now have an off-flickr Brisbane Meetup website.

I finished off the roll of Fujicolor 200 today by shooting some birds down in the botanic gardens.

Immature Dusky Moorhen

I also picked up a roll of Neopan Acros 100 and one of Ilford Delta 100 to try out (big photography weekend coming up this weekend).

15 mins later the film was developed and from a peek at the negs they all look good. :-)

I suppose that's the difference between when I shoot digital and when I shoot film. For digital I am usually happy with 10% good from a shoot, but with film I'm aiming for 90-100% and from this cursory look I reckon I've achieved that on this roll.

So it looks like I'll be firing up the negative scanner tonight to have a closer peek!

After dropping in to Rainer's Camera House today (still no lens btw), I went for a wander and ended up at City Hall.

In the Brisbane Museum (the one on the left as you enter the building), there's a exhibition of Cook's three voyages of discovery, accompanied by some quite impressive panoramic photographs. The panoramas are printed in separate sheets and stitched by hanging them on the walls such that they all align.

It's an interesting effect, alas, no photographs of the installation as there's a sign expressly stating photography is forbidden for this exhibition.

Still worth dropping in for a peek if you're in downtown Brisbane as the prints are gorgeous (something one tends to forget in this day of online photography).

So next month (actually in about 2 weeks) is my birthday and as such I'm being treated to a new lens.

I've decided to go for the Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide angle lens which will pretty much replace the kit lens I have now (18-55mm but I have an EF 50/1.8). I dropped into Rainer's in town this morning, but they're all sold out and have a batch on back order (supposedly in next Tuesday). They're the cheapest supplier around for this lens ($649), even beating Photo Continental ($699) and easily beating Ted's ($749, but they will go down to $700 if pushed).

I did however, have a go of the Canon 10-22 while in the store this morning, but they're going for a titch over a grand, which is just way too expensive for this little black duck.

One curious aspect of Rainer's Camera House though is that (at least this morning), they insist you use one of their camera bodies (sans-CF card) to test the lens. This is somewhat annoying as I don't have an image to take away with me to scrutinize on screen. I'm thinking when I go back next time I'll take a laptop and do some remote captures directly to the hard disk and thus be able to pixel-peep in-store. Given Sigma's reputation for iffy quality control I want to make sure I get a good copy straight up.

Update - it came in on Thursday :)

Here's a sample:  

Raw Mill Number 6

Industrial Plaza

Bigoode posted about equipment recently and I figured I'd join the fun and post about my current gear.

Summary:

Canon 400D

• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
• Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-4.6 EX HSM
• BG-E3 Battery Grip
• Homemade remote (RS60-E3 equiv)
• Canon 188A SpeedLite (circa ~1981)

Canon T-70

• Canon FD 50mm f/1.8
• Canon FD 300mm f/4
• Tokina FD SZ-X 28-200mm f/3.5-5.3

Canon S2 IS

• Raynox 0.66x wide angle converter
• 58mm and 52mm adapter tubes

My main camera is a Canon 400D (XTi in the US, KISS something-or-other in Japan). I bought the 18-55 kit and an EF 50mm f/1.8 lens at the same time, and took advantage of the cashback offer on a BG-E3 battery grip too. The battery grip makes this rather small SLR fairly comfortable and helps out greatly for portrait orientation shots.

I primarily use the 50mm lens as the picture quality is vastly better than the kit 18-55mm lens, although of late, I've pulled out the kit lens and used it wide with a polariser to obtain some fairly decent shots.

Next up (hopefully for my birthday next month) is the Sigma 10-20mm ultrawide. (UPDATE: I now have this lens)

Followed probably by a Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 or a decent SpeedLite, as the fixed direction Canon 188A SpeedLite I have (>20 years old and still working), is a bit limiting.

Additionally, I have a prosumer point and shoot - Canon S2 IS, which was my primary camera before upgrading to the 400D. It still gets used occasionally for macro work or long focal lengths (12x zoom, equiv of 432mm), and to shoot the odd shot movie (mostly for buyers of our puppies).

Then there's the film SLR. I have a Canon T-70 and am borrowing (semi-permanent loan?) a Canon FD 300mm f/4 lens for it. I also have a pair of Canon FD 50mm f/1.8's and a Tokina FD SZ-X 28-200mm f/3.5-5.3 but that latter lens is less than ideal on the quality stakes.

After watching the development of a roll of b&w film at Greg's place, I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of home development, and may (finances allowing) try to start accumulating enough gear to do that myself.

As for what I shoot, well really whatever takes my fancy, although I have a prediliction towards portraits, landscape and night photography and nature/birding when I have the long lenses with me.

I've had a bit of a play around here and my first impressions are fairly good.

The interface is familiar enough to be easy to get around without having to think too hard, and the additional features are nicely implemented (eg page customisations, geotagging, etc).

I've only got one major issue right now and that's the lack of IPTC/EXIF -> Title/Description upon upload. My workflow at the moment has me tagging, adding titles and descriptions via IPTC and EXIF metadata with either Lightroom or Photoshop before uploading. Flickr will use this information to populate the Title and Description fields on the photo, a real time-saver for me, but alas ipernity does not do this (yet).