This one's from this afternoon, after a somewhat damp trip to @lensfayre for the launch of Megawatt Valley by @davidsevern_photo, @calmanalogue, and @chrismatthews82.
I enjoyed seeing the exhibition of photos, and was rather pleased to find that my submission was included (photos 2 and 3, after the jump).
I picked up a couple of rolls of film from Lensfayre, so I'll hopefully get something decent on that in the near future.
Fairly unusual to see a fixed wing and rotor flying at the same speed, as far as I can tell, but this pair did it rather well.
A backup photo today, taken at the Wales airshow a few weeks ago.
Work has been more than usually mad this week, we are on a horrendous deadline, and the lathe has virtually given up the ghost, thus I've spent much of the past few evenings making parts on my tiny machine instead.
A backup photo, taken at the Wales airshow a couple of days ago.
This thing is impressively manoeuvrable for what must be a heavy aircraft with a lot of water sloshing around in the back.
Still, I suppose water doesn't get airsick, complain or ask for a refund...
In a completely unplanned but rather fortuitous turn of events, we discovered that our last full day in Wales coincided with the Wales Airshow, so we decided to go along and have a look.
It was a great day out, and I've still only got through culling the first of three sessions worth of photos - I rather surprised myself when I checked the camera in the evening and found that I'd taken nearly 4000 photos.
No wonder I was going through batteries like they're going out of fashion!
These three photos are of Firebirds Displays doing their daytime thing. (Yes, they also have a nighttime thing, which might appear later, if the photos aren't terrible)
A couple more after the jump.
Or mistiming and insufficient elevation, as the case may be.
I spotted this shot as I was loading the dishwasher.
By the time I'd got the camera and lens, attached the monopod, got in the right region for exposure, changed the flat battery, and otherwise finished faffing, the moon had moved across and down, so I struggled to get enough height to get the moon where I wanted it in frame.
To top it off, the light had dropped off that little bit more than I'd have liked.
How tedious, better luck next time!
"There's one of those annoying photographers over there, let's wind him up!"
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.
I heard a plane circling overhead this evening and it piqued my curiosity.
A bit of digging on ADSBexchange revealed it was a fairly unusual fixed-wing police aircraft.
Turns out NPAS have four of them, based at my local airport. Who knew?!
This one is from very late last night / early this morning, the Strawberry Moon.
I spotted the moon through this plant, and thought it made for an interesting shot.
As the depth of field was so shallow at the long focal length I had to use to get the moon to a decent size in the frame, (840mm) this is a composite made up of one shot focused on the branch, and one focused out on the moon.
You have to be relatively quick with setups like this, as the moon drifts across your frame at a surprising speed. 15°/hour doesn't sound like much, but when your field of view is less than 3°, and you're lining the moon up in a small gap, your framing goes to pot in a matter of seconds.
A busy day - my first day back at work after a week off today, followed by an evening of sound man duties, followed by doing a job for a friend, and finally wrapped up by preparing tools and running some 3D prints off for work tomorrow.
All this adds up to... you guessed it... another backup photo, shot on the first of December.
Incidentally, how on earth is it 1AM already? I guess that technically makes this late, but in my world, it's still tonight, not tomorrow, because I've not been to bed yet. Therefore, not late yet!
I shall cease my erratic blabbering now.
Good Night.
At about 15:40 today, Ratcliffe on Soar Power Station disconnected its generators from the grid for the last time.
The UK's power grid is now coal-free.
It's really weird to know that this is it; never again will we see these chimneys and cooling towers releasing their plumes across the landscape.
Big thing far away, small thing not so far away...
I had a trial flying lesson today - the first time I've operated a real aircraft.
Exciting and interesting in equal measure.
I have a reasonable handle on the basic principles of flight both from general interest and from doing my A2 drone certification, but putting it into practise on a real aircraft is quite a different kettle of fish.
This is the aircraft I flew today, on the flight before mine - my father-in-law was behind the controls here, having his first flight too.
We had a great instructor, who clearly loves everything about flying - he's a NATO pilot for work, and instructs for fun at the weekend.
A backup image today, taken last night.
I woke up this morning with a splitting headache, and feeling quite sick, so I think it was probably a migraine.
All rather unpleasant, and resulted in having to spend a large chunk of the day in bed - but things did improve in the early evening, which was quite a relief.
Tired and sore in the ankle...
Too much time on my feet and squatting down over the last few days has really made my ankle flare up this evening.
The technical demo today went much better than I had expected though, and I've also managed to get to the cause of a strange issue I was experiencing on one of our new circuit breakers.
Hopefully the first step to finding a solution!
There's a bit of a story behind this glass. Lucy was never a big drinker, but on a night out with some friends a few years ago, she was persuaded to order a pint of cider.
After about four hours, she made it to the bottom of the glass, and there was much jubilation as a result.
The moment was fortunately photographed. (photo after the jump)
Somehow, the glass ended up coming home with us...
It seemed fitting to raise this glass to her on her birthday and remember some of the good times we shared.
I went for a sunny early evening wander by the river today. I'm quite pleased with these, and with some others I took today.
I'd recently had some misgivings about the sharpness of my 150-600 lens, but I thought I'd try stopping it down and cranking the shutter speed up to try and get the best out of it. I managed to get these at f/13 @ 1/640 sec, ISO 1600, and it's tamed both the camera shake and fuzziness I had previously been unhappy with.
I've still got a bit of a mental picture from my early DSLR days of anything over ISO 800 being really noisy - but that's not really the case with these more modern cameras. ISO 1600 on the 6D Mk II is pretty clean, and definitely usable.
I need to stop fearing the ISO!
Totally unrelated, but I got my first clear covid test today, so I'm really hoping it's still good tomorrow, which will mean I can see some friends and family at a thing that's been planned for a long time.
A few more after the jump.
I went out for a bit of a drive round this evening and got these.
I wasn't deliberately fishing for panoramic shots, but I felt these all worked better at this aspect ratio than the as-shot ratio.
First one is with the Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary + 1.4x teleconverter @ 600mm (840mm effective).
Last two after the jump.
Went on a boat trip at Rutland Water this evening to try and see ospreys.
We did catch a glimpse of a couple in the distance, but even with a 600mm lens, plus 1.4x teleconverter, mounted to a 1.6x crop sensor body for an effective 35mm equivalent focal length of over 1300mm, they were not very large in the frame.
Still a fun trip though...
One of the two frames actually containing an osprey after the jump.
