After the zombie apocalypse...

Well, that's how I imagined this place.
In reality it was a closed-off section of an outdoor venue that I could stick my camera through to grab a slightly unusual photo.

I'm yet to find the calm, creative mood on work days. I seem to have 2 modes: work and non-work.

The work mode seems to make me reasonably efficient but uncreative. The non-work mode leaves me quite lazy and unproductive but creative.

Anyway...I endeavour to continue to keep persisting ;-)

Tommi's Bar: Nikon Df, 24mm, f/1.6, 1/250s, ISO100

A Black and White day

Yesterday (Saturday), I went to Bethnal Green (again) to see more of the area. It's definitely still an up-and-coming place...a bit rough around the edges with corners, bridge underpasses and alleyways that you don't want to hang around too late after sunset - well at least not when I'm about with my see-in-the-dark Df...

It leads somewhere: Nikon Df, 24mm, f4.5, 1/160s, ISO100

Behind the Tree: Nikon Df, 24mm, f/2.0, 1/800s, ISO100

Red and blue

I've been away from this computer for a while, either busy elsewhere or stuck at the work computer!
The weather has also put a slight dampener on my photography, although with the Df being weather-sealed, it shouldn't really stop me from taking pictures.

These were taken recently on a Sunday morning near an inner-city farmer's market and whilst flat-hunting near Bethnal Green. With the farmers market being near Marylebone, you could say that the "farmers market" is a lot more upmarket than Bethnal Green!

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO50

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/2.5, 1/200s, ISO100

An evening landscape

I took this a while back on my D700 but never got to post it.
It may be slightly cliche as a landscape but it's still a spectacular view we have and if/when we leave this building we'll certainly miss it.

Nikon D700, 85mm, f/9.0, 3s

Night vision

This is a bit of a rushed post, as I am still recovering from a cold that I caught during my trip to Kos.
Having taken over 200 images on my Df, I have learned quite a lot about this camera.
One thing that I am comfortable to let it do is to use high ISOs that would previously been unusable on the D700.

For all shots, in-camera noise reduction was turned OFF.
I'm no expert in removal of noise in post-processing but this was handled for me by Topaz DeNoise 5.

The first shot was totally usable in colour but since the lighting was a very uninteresting sodium streetlamp, I decided it was better in B&W. Even at pixel-peeping levels the noise is very "organic" or film-like and pleasant.

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO16000

The second photo of the cat was taken by the bottom steps of our hotel.
I'm not sure if I achieved critical focus but you might imagine how dark it was by looking at the size of the pupils of the cat's eyes. If that was a lens, it would be at f/1.0 :-)

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO20000

Again, better in B&W as the red carpet was a bit distracting but fairly usable in colour?

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO20000

Being Greece, cats are abound and seem to proliferate at night. Most of them scuttle around the bins or between cars but some prefer to do as humans do, hoping that they are out of sight.
Here again it was extremely dark and both the camera and I had trouble focusing.
I think the cat detected me but was a bit spooked by not knowing what I was up to!
Again I think the noise is OK, especially for web upload.

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/60s, ISO57470

Kos

I haven't been blogging recently since I've been on a mini vacation to the Greek Island of Kos. Normally known as a British, teen holidaymakers' party island...we decided to try it out in the off-season for some hiking, sightseeing and the hope of finding some good food!

We weren't disappointed!

I did think about processing some of the RAWs in-camera and transmitting them to the phone but we're not at the hotel for long, either rushing to get out or collapsing with exhaustion after a long day. I've also had a bad cold since day2 so taking photos has been my limit.

Some photos are in square format as I took them that way for Instagram.

British muscle

Over in the USA, this might be a Ford Gran Torino, which is great to look at, although I can't say that I've driven one.

Perhaps in the UK (where the equivalent is never seemingly as cool as in the US) it would be a Ford Cortina. By the looks of this, according to Wikipedia, this is a Mark III (1970-1976).

This one was parked in Greenwich while we were (guess what?) flat-hunting.
It seemed to be in decent shape, at least from the outside and although I wouldn't call it a muscle-car, it has its charms.

Nikon Df, 50mm f/2.2, 1/3200s, ISO100