Alternative Comedy

Here's another image of that hydrangea flower, this time with dark background and very shallow depth of field, which didn't quite work, I don't think. 

Nice colours, though.

Alternative Therapy

Another image of the hydrangea flower, this time using a slightly different treatment.

Happy New Year

This image of a wind blasted hydrangea flower is the first made in 2014 that I've posted. It resulted from a spot of fine, calm weather on Sunday, which produced a number of images which I'll post over the next few days.

Big Blue

With my image pipeline drying up, I've been reviewing some of the images that I made earlier this year, trying to find something suitable for posting. I've found that a bit of additional post-processing can liven some of them up enough for this purpose.

So we have this image, made at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales back in September. I've no idea what type of flower this is. I used the blue channel for the mono conversion to make the seeds pop (pun intended) a bit more than using the other channels would have allowed.

What's NEXt for Sony?

An interesting post on Sony Alpha Rumours regarding Sony market share in Japan, here.

In summary: Sony gained market share in mirrorless cameras, whilst losing it in the DSLR/DSLT and compact camera markets.

This generally reinforces the point that I made in my posts last year about Sony’s imaging strategy, that Sony finds itself in a unique place amongst the major camera manufacturers. Unfortunately, unique does not equate to good in this case, especially for existing Sony customers.

To reiterate – Sony is the only major manufacturer to find itself with a significant user base which is split between two lens mounts. Canikon have produced mirrorless offerings which have failed to set the world alight, but this failure may ultimately prove to be an advantage as the vast majority of their respective user bases remain on single, long standing lens mounts. This gives them access to an enormous range of third party and legacy lenses, which Sony just can’t match, on A or E mount.

In other news, Sony is dropping the NEX brand. This seems like a weak attempt to hide this problem by uniting all their interchangeable lens cameras under the Alpha badge and hoping that the casual observer won’t notice the different specs. Sony’s Mark Weir is quoted as explaining the move by saying:

“…there was concern that consumers could easily misunderstand there to be a lack of compatibility between the two.”

Even the normally upbeat Andrea had to comment:

“Well there is a lack of compatibility between the two! Or can you use the FE lenses bought for the A7-A7r on the A77-A99? Nope ”

You will note that there are protestations of commitment to A mount from Sony, but I think that they protest too much. A more likely scenario is that A mount will now be allowed to quietly wither and die, slowly - or perhaps not so slowly? - disappearing from the Alpha range. 

Its Christmas, Rose

This image is the result of a photo session that happened a week or two before Christmas. On the face of it, the results were very poor, which is why its taken so long for me to salvage this image with a significant amount of post-processing.

The flower in question is a camellia bloom, also known as a Christmas rose, because it flowers around mid-winter, or a China rose, because the plant originates in the Orient.

This particular specimen is one of the first plants that we bought for the garden, and we nearly killed it by planting it in a south facing bed, before realising our error, digging it up and putting it in a pot on the west side of the house.

Moments In Time

This is the final image from Shapwick that I'm going to post.

Over the holiday, I watched a BBC programme called "Moments in Time". This was a syncretic fusion of an end of year news review and a photography show, which to quote the show's web-page, told "The story of 2013 told through the high-impact images of the year, exploring how photography has changed in the age of smartphones, social media and the selfie."

So, we were treated to twelve images, one per month, some discussion of the news story and the details of how the image came to be made. The latter included a brief description of the kit used, and this was interesting - well, to me, at least. I noticed a couple of things:

Firstly, there was a definite hierarchy in camera phones - iPhones were named as such, everything else was just a "smartphone". Obviously, the media types at the BBC are Apple fanbois.

Secondly, despite all the guff about camera phones and social media, around half of the images featured in the show were actually made by professional photographers.

Thirdly, and related to the second point, the kit used fell into two distinct groups - camera phones and high-end DSLRs.There was only one image - of Andy Murray celebrating his win at Wimbledon - that was made with an entry level DSLR, by a member of the crowd.

So, what did I glean from this? Well, I suppose that it supports my view that the days of a mass market for DSLRs are numbered. Camera phones will take over the point and shoot market, mirrorless cameras will come to dominate the mid-range with DSLRs relegated to the professional market, along with medium format.

However, we all know the quality of my prognosticative powers. 

Another Return

Another image from the Christmas Eve session at Shapwick NNR.

And, in line with my New Year resolution, that's all I'm going to write on the subject.