Better than a poke in the eye too.
Not the finest photo to grace these pages, but at least I got a brief glimpse of the Aurora tonight between two banks of cloud.
I've seen some absolutely spectacular photos that other people have managed to capture over the last couple of days, I'm very jealous, and want to move somewhere with better skies!
It's a backup photo again today; it was 4PM, and I'd finished the main job for the day, so I thought I'd use the last hour of the day to take a quick look at some mods that have been requested to a piece of software I wrote a while back.
The next time I looked at the clock, it was 7:30, dark, and I was hungry.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I often seem to sink into a hyperfocus when I'm working on software.
I quite enjoyed it though.
I thought this bollard light gamely hanging on despite being the wrong way up reminded me of how I feel some days! (Not this particular day though, fortunately)
It's a backup photo today, shot yesterday.
I did take a few photos today, but I preferred this one, so I'm posting it.
I upgraded my venerable EF 50mm f/1.4 USM to a used EF 50mm f/1.2L today.
It's a only a minor upgrade in light gathering ability, just 1/3 stop, but it is significantly sharper.
The R5 at 45MP asks quite a lot of your glass.
I've been casually looking for one of these lenses to come up again locally for at least a year, so when I saw one had appeared in Wex recently, my self-control fairly quickly went out of the window.
It was a very pleasant afternoon to have a wander round, despite the football crowds. The fans all seemed to be in good spirits and peaceful, at least at this stage, so the atmosphere was pretty relaxed.
I saw this misty field on my way to work and had to stop and grab a photo.
And mind the icy surfaces.
A backup photo today from a nocturnal wander last week.
A backup photo today, I've had a busy and productive day, bashing out a test report and a few other bits, then after work I did some machining on a little project I've been working on recently and fixed something that's been in my pile of things-to-fix-for-people for a while.
The ice formations in this puddle were hugely varied, with all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes. Most of the other puddles were just frozen over flat, so I'd love to know what was different here.
I thought this deranged shopping trolley made a slightly amusing sight.
I went for a walk with my parents this afternoon, and we spotted this group of snowdrops under a hedge.
I think this may be the earliest I've seen them - I've just looked back at the last couple of years, and it looks like both were February.
This one's a stack of 5 shots, I had the camera on a mini tripod and just manually moved the focus ring between shots.
I've been fiddling with the software for this test rig on and off over the last few days, chasing a bug in some failure detection logic. I finally caught the little rascal today, as commemorated by this message.
I absolutely, definitely, didn't celebrate by programming the display to show a range of rude messages to my colleague, because that would have been extremely childish.
👹
Bit of a busy day and evening today.
The forecast show has arrived this evening. I shall await developments to see if we get Britain-stopping levels (that our overseas friends would laugh at) of snow overnight.
After a few days of light snowy conditions, it was a bit odd to come out of work to rain.
Oh, and it took approximately two hours and eight minutes of being in the building until [redacted].
Such fun.
First working day of the year, and I ended up doing about an hour and a half over. Silly boy.
Despite that, I actually managed to make real food with actual vegetables tonight. Astonishing.
This pair of photos are 3x macro shots, stacks of 62 and 77 frames respectively.
One more after the jump.
I froze myself nearly solid this afternoon waiting for a murmuration that never occurred.
I can't work out whether it just didn't happen, or happened really early, or I left too soon, but I gave it a good 15 minutes after sunset, having got in position half an hour or so before.
Colour me confused (as usual).
I don't think much to the 1.4x extender on this lens with the R5. Oddly enough, I think this is the first time I've used the combination, but it's pretty fuzzy, even stopped well down and with a respectably fast shutter speed. Some more investigation may be required as I don't recall it being this bad in the past.
I don't mind this shot though.
I didn't get out earlier to get a nice shot of the moon with something in front of it because I was busy working on something, but I did get what I think is a fairly decent shot of the moon in splendid isolation later on.
I used the M6 here for the "free" teleconversion effect of the smaller sensor, which doesn't reduce the light like an optical teleconverter does.
First Snow!
I had a rather pleasant walk this afternoon, and I didn't even fall over. How fortuitous.
So, 2026 is upon us.
I have entertained thoughts of stopping the daily project and going to a more sporadic schedule of posting as and when it happens, but I've decided to try and stick with the daily project for now. I think the consistency is good for me overall, and it does give me something to focus on.
The particularly observant may have noticed less mention of 52Frames recently - this is because I stopped doing it after 54 weeks. I dropped it for a number of reasons, initially because I was so busy at work, but then because on reflection I found quite a few of the assignments rather irritating.
When you're shooting for someone, as I did in a previous life, you may well get an unusual assignment dropped on your plate, but there is usually some motivation or structure to the request, and if the subject is a bit odd, there will usually be a reason for it, along with access to the subject.
As 2025 wore on, I found myself reaching into the backup bucket rather frequently.
I think the main reason is that the overall level of pressure at work and particularly spending much more time physically in the building, immersed in miscellaneous unwanted stimuli, and interacting with people was killing my creativity, not least because I found myself coming home almost every day utterly knackered, and ended up spending countless evenings crashed out on the sofa, waking up mid-evening hungry and in something of a daze.
Hopefully this will improve now, and I'll find more energy to shoot with.
I'm intending to carry on with the same loose set of self-imposed rules of shooting on the day where I can, and sharing a previous "backup" photo from the last couple of weeks or so where I can't.
It's just over a year since I got the EOS R5. I still love it, and it's a great camera to use, notwithstanding a very occasional tendency to lock up, which I've only once had a DSLR do. Battery life could be better, but that's the nature of a mirrorless system.
I do miss the integrated GPS from the EOS 6D II, syncing a separate track log from a separate unit is tedious, as is messing with the app to sync location with your phone. Canon also ruined the app by mandating sign-in, which doesn't work unless you have Chrome installed on your phone - I ditched Chrome years ago, so that's not happening!
Onward!
