Category: Technology

It’s quiet round here…

Simon Leave a comment

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done much with this blog, but there’s a reason for that, and it’s the Ukulele.

More specifically it’s being part to TWUNT, The Tunbridge Wells Ukulele Night Thing.  Having only taken up the instrument back in May 2010, it’s grown and grown, through many a TWUNT night in the pub, to playing local gigs, to playing Chris Evans’ Carfest South 2012.

See our write up on how it went, with a wee bit of footage and photos – it was brilliant!

I am the web guy for the group, of my own volunteering and it’s nice to have a real reason for doing stuff with WordPress.  The Ukulele has impacted my life quite considerably and I’ll write that up one day.

 

 

 

 

Tunbridge Wells Ukulele Night Thing website

Simon 4 Comments

www.twukulele.com

Here’s a website www.twukulele.com, for The Tunbridge Wells Ukulele Night Thing, I’ve built and there’s quite a story behind it.

It all started when I bought my toddler son a Ukulele.  The scale of the Uke to the wee lad seemed a perfect match.  Then, by chance, I bumped into Dave Kinder who was organising a Ukulele night in Royal Tunbridge Wells and he invited me along.  Having never played guitar or uke before, I thought what the hell, I’ll give it a go.

After the first night, I was hooked and have been going ever since, and I’m not alone.  The group has grown, such that we have even played in public on the Pantiles Bandstand and appeared on TV (Meridian Tonight – Southeast).

The idea of a website, was born out of the fact that whilst we have a Facebook Group page, not everyone in the group uses or wants to use Facebook.  With the group growing in size, with songbooks, video clips and photos, it seemed the next step.

www.twukulele.com is a hobby site for me that is growing and proving a very exciting real life experiment.  I am not only the web developer, but the customer too (no excluding the rest of the group).  That gives me great freedom to experiment, in a controlled fashion, of course!

Powered by WordPress, I initially created a two column site for simple blog posts.  As content and traffic grew, I’ve widened it to 3 columns, to give me more space near the top, for the stuff I want visitors to see.

I did make and early mistake, by adding a forum and discovered forums are dangerous, as empty forums look awful and give the impression no one visits your site.  Since no conversations got going, I removed it.  We now leave that to Facebook, email and good old fashioned conversation in person.

The group has given me the opportunity to experiment with my Olympus E620 camera too.  It’s not easy photographing in a dimmly lit pub, especially when crammed full of ukulele players.  Still I managed to get enough to justify populating galleries.

Next up came video and I decided we need a YouTube channel.  Two reasons; firstly it’s saves on my web space and bandwidth (this is on a budget!), more more importantly, YouTube increases our exposure, driving traffic to the site and maybe new members to the group!

In line with that, I created a Twitter account for us and added a widget to the site listing recent tweets.  Adding the Facebook group’s badge to the site, completes the loop (for now) and traffic is on the up 🙂

Songbooks are maintained in Google Docs to save having to upload every time we add to them.

Then there’s the Newsletter module too to help us keep followers and non Facebook members up to date with latest news.

I am making use of Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and a Stats module for WordPress, to keep track of our progress.  This is really interesting, see the effectiveness of Newsletters, Tweets and Videos.

The site is being followed by other Ukeulele groups, such that we’ve had a contingent from another group join us for a session, taking our record to 45 ukuleles at once!.  We’re also seeing request to make appearences!

Who knows where this will go!

Please visit www.twukulele.com and let me know what you think – you may just find yourself joining us!

Chinese New Year in Tunbridge Wells – With a Flashgun…

Simon 1 Comment

p2130306asmallOn Saturday February the 13th, residents of Tunbridge Wells celebrated the coming of the Chinese New Year – The Year of the Tiger!  My family and I joined in too, with our own lnaterns and me with my camera, eager to use my new flashgun.

How hard can it be?  Well not that easy!  Armed with a new Metz Flashgun 48 AF-1, that has so far proved more than powerful for home and garden, I soon found myself getting all sorts ofgood and bad results.

The parade began at Trinity Theatre in the centre of town.  We arrived at 16:45 and found the place full of lanterns and people gathering for the parade.  Bloco Fogo were there two, and I hoped to get some good colourful shots of them in action.  The weather didn’t look too good, it was raining lightly.  Thankfully the rain held off once things got going, though it did make me wonder, how sensitive DSLRs are to rain….p2130143asmall

Bloco Fogo lined up and started drumming away in the car park, whilst the rest of us lined up behind.

I made my way to the front to try and capture the parade as they left  Trinity Theatretowards the centre of town.  I soon realised, that despite the parade being a slow walk, when you’re trying to capture it on stills, it all goes too fast!!  This is especially true when you’re still learning.

The hardest thing of all was to get the right ballance of exposure and flash between the fore and background.  Too much emphasis on the back and the front’s washed out and just right at the front, meant the back was too dark.  This coupled with the fack the whole parade is moving meant for many blurred shots.  I tried fiddling around with higher ISO, but that just introduced noise.  Slower shutter speeds sort of worked, but too much lusk was required to ensure the right things were blurred/ not blurred.

So photographically, it was a bit disappointing, but then I guess with some right proper expensive kit, it might be easier.  If anyone’s got any tips for such scenarios with similar kit to mine, I’d be very grateful to hear from you.  For now, I’ll stick with daytime parades!

p2130257asmallThat aside, the evening was great, ending up at St Barnabas School on Camden Road for a hotdog and some more drumming from Bloco Fogo.  My son enjoyed it big time, especially watching a couple of Chinese lights float of into the sky, listening to Bloco Fogo, and even tapping a drum himself!  Hopefully I’ll be better prepared for next year.

Here’s the best shots of the lot…

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Olympus e620 Grainy Film Art Filter

Simon 1 Comment

Grainy Film photo of Union FlagEver since moving to digital photography, I have often thought of taking black and white photos.  Thing is, I use the ‘take it in colour and convert some later with PhotoShop or similar’.  Theflaw in this approach is, at least for me, is I never seem to get round to trauling through the hundreds (thousands) of photos and converting them to black and white ‘just to see’.  Net result?  Very few black and white photos. 

Art Filters to the rescue!  Now I know there are many posts and reviews around the net that slate such functionality built into Digital SLR cameras, but I think it is useful, epsecialy for people like me, where the post developing never actually happens.  To some, the more experienced photographers, they may seem a bit gimigky, watering down the skill required to use a ‘proper’ camera.  However, not all of us are pros (yet 🙂 ), so please remember that folks.

Why is it useful?  The biggest reason is using the feature in situe gives you an immediate answer to the question “What would it look like in black and white?”.  Not only that, you can alter the shot to get it right there and then, something you may not be able to acheive in post developement. 

Another reason for me is it can inspire further creativity, as you see other nearby opportunities that might look good in black and white.  You almsot start hunting for black and white photos.

Whilst on can take photos in black and white on most digital cameras, the Art Filters on my e620 includes ‘Grainy Film’ filter.  This is the only Art Filter I use and I like it as it has a lot more contrast compared to the monochrome setting, which always seems a bit too grey.  It doesn’t always work though, and you have to play around with exposure to try and get it right as somethimes the detail you’re after, get’s lost in the black or the white.  Some shots just seem to come alive when the colour is taken out.

So that’s my waffly defence for the Art Filters on the Olympus e620, especially the Grainy Film one ;-).

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What’s not so good about my Olympus e620?

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Olympus e620So it’s nearly been a few months now, so here’s what’s not so good with my Olympus e620.

Well I’m very gald to say, “Not a lot!!”.   Yep, nearly all incredibly minor niggles are down to me as much as the camera.  By that I mean, I’ve still to learn how to drive it properly.

Nothing I hear you cry?  Well you’re right to be suspicous of my claim, as there is one thing that is annoying.  Theres no autofocus assist beam!! 

Auto focus struggles in low light or low contrast situations.  Now the e620 makes use of the pop up flash, which it strobes whilst trying to focus.  Not only is this very slow, it’s quite annoying and, if I’m honest, embarasing.  Having moved from compact cameras with those handly little focus assist lamps, this is annoying when considering a DSLR is supposed to give me more photographic power.  Sometimes it just fails to focus at all. 

I know there are ways round it, like focusing on something nearby, but same distance, or turning all the house lights on, but that’s not always possible.  You can of course revert to manual focus, but without any means of knowing if focus is acheived, other than using ones eye, this can be hard too in low light.Metz 48 AF-1 Flashgun

So what do I do now?  Simple – I chose to buy a flashgun with an AF Assist lamp.  I purchased a Metz 48 AF-1, which has turned out to be really good and has solved the low light autofocus problem.  It does mean I have to cart the flashgun around with me, but then I do, since I’ve payed for it ;-).

I guess this is a problem with DSLRs, as even with a built in beam, you are often focusing on object much fiurther away than you would with a compact point and shoot.

Other than that, all is going well and I’m enjoying the Olympus e620.

Bloco Fogo Caught with Olymous e620

Simon 2 Comments

During early September, whilst out doing some Christmas shopping in Tunbridge Wells, my son and I heard some drumming!  It’s was a samba band.  We followed our ears to investigate and found Bloco Fogo playing in the centre by the clock tower.

Luckily I had my shiny new Olympus e620 with me, in the hope I’d have cause to use it, and I did!

After successfully pushing my way through to the front, using my son’s pram as a people plough, I attached the 50 to 150mm lens and started snapping away.

Now I must stress, at the time I was still getting used to the camera, and still am!  So despite taking quite a few shots, these are the only one’s worth uploading, the rest are either out of focus, wrong exposure, or naff composition.

Bloco Fogo are an Afro-bloco samba band from Kent www.blocofogo.com.  I’ve seen them before and have to say they are rather good, very loud, colourful and energetic.  So loud in fact, that my son covered up his ears for the duration!

What do you think?

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I’ve bought an Olympus e620 D-SLR

Simon 1 Comment

Olympus e620 Twin Lens KitSince 2009 saw a landmark Birthday, and Christmas was looking, I thought it about time to move up from a digital compact camera and get myself a new toy, a Digital SLR.

Now many moons ago I used to dabble in photography with an Canon AE-1 of my Dad’s and then my own Canon A-1.  Quick to adopt digital I bought a Sanyo VPC-X350 in 1999, as it did video too.  Nothing special by today’s standard, but it was very novel being able to click away for free and check I got the shot there and then.  After a few years of that I bought a Canon PowerShot A520, as it had loads of manual features I’d missed since the days of film.  This served me well, until I updated to a Canon PowerShot A700, which has served even better and continues to do so now.

However, the capability of my compact camera is limited in certain situations and when asked to take some photos at a party, since I seemed to be the only one with a camera, I struggled.  The main problem was the very low light, under which the A700 struggled.  Whilst suitable stationary close up shots were OK, anything too rapid and I missed the action, through having to wait for the flash to re-charge.  Plus the range of the flash was just not far enough.  Afterwards, I thought: “wouldn’t it be nice to have a flashgun”.  Alas the A700 has not hot shoe, but that was enough, coupled with the up and coming Birthday to think about getting something more powerful.

The journey to the e620 had started, though I didn’t know I’d end up with one.  At first, I thought I’d look at some of the larger compacts, or ‘Bridge’ cameras that could accommodate a flash gun.  The hope was this could be an affordable option, as budget was tight.  There was no chance of blowing 4 figures on a load of semi-pro stuff.

To my surprise, the cost of these hybrids seemed to top the budget SLRs.  The more I looked the more I got confused on what I should get.  Great sites like http://www.dpreview.com, steves-digicams.com, www.ephotozine.com,  and www.photographyblog.com gave me a big insight into the pros and cons of cameras available, as it’s all to easy to fall for the manufacturer’s jargon.

I narrowed the search to the Canon EOS 500D, Nikon D5000, the new Pentax K-x and the Olympus e620.  Now the Pentax was initialy the most interesting, since it was available in red.  Now I know that’s no reason to choose a camera, but I was very tempted.  I was tempted too by it’s use of AA batteries which is something I find very handy on holiday with my Canon PowerShots.  Hoever, the reviews and forum threads on capacity with AA was appaling and scared me off.  So time to compare the other 3.  I thought I’d best see them in the flesh and that’s when I liked the e620.  It’s compact, lightweight (as are the lenses thanks to in-body stabalisation) and has an articulated screen (something I find very useful on my video camera).  Many folks said it’s important to be comfortable with the camera in hand, and the e620 drew me in.  I was no longer tempted by the HD video of the others, as it seems D-SLRs are not thr right format for recodding video, espceically when auctoficus ins’t available whiclt recording, or apature control, etc…  Video cameras as good for video and at the moment, it seems, D-SLRs are still best for stills.

So to sum up, why I bought the e620?

  • I liked it in the flesh
  • In body image stabilization.
  • Versatile articulated screen – great when at the back of the crowd, or for self portrait.
  • Loads of features – most of which I feel I need and enough to keep my mind occupied for a while.
  • Image quality, that whilst might be pipped at the post by the Canon at high ISO, it’s still way ahead of what I can acheive with my PowerShot 700.
  • Price – I got a twin lens bundle 14-42 and 50-150mm that I couldn’t find anything near to for the Canon or Nikon.

I’m not going into detail about the pros and cons compared to the rest, as there’s plenty of good reviews out there, that have already done that.  What I do hope to do, however, is blog ‘living with an Olympus e620’ as a new to Digital SLR user coming from a digital compact user’s perspective.

That’s it for now – time to read some more of the user manual – again