Testing, testing. 1, 2, 3.

The weather has been the bane of my life recently. A lack of subject matter close to home has stopped me making use of what short breaks there have been in the rain/cold/wind (delete as applicable). All in all it's just made me want to stop in and vegetate. I have managed to nip out a time or two but mostly to play around, fruitlessly, with the new small camera. I do like using it, but it's fixed lens is more suited to getting in close with people than photographing sheep! still I have managed to test out the technical properties of its files, which are good enough for me. There's a surprising amount of leeway with the dynamic range.

On that same outing I took the upmarket compact I use as my back-up camera when fishing. It produces rather good results but suffers from sluggish focusing, which makes it a bit hit and miss for photographing people doing stuff. It lacks a viewfinder too, which is a bit of a pain.

Hoping to be taking a new direction with a project I thought it was time to wean myself off my do-it-all lens and get something a little longer. I toyed with seeking out a longer zoom but settled instead for a teleconverter to use with my much neglected 70-200. The TC arrived today, another wet and gloomy day, and I tested it for focus accuracy through a grubby window. It passed.

I guess that the results might not be super-sharp, but they're sharp enough for me. Especially given the ridiculously high ISO. That exaggerated sharpness I see in a lot of digital photography continues to bug me anyway. With lenses of a longer than average focal length there is always a temptation to photograph birds. This is something I must try to avoid. Unless I can find a way to make an 'alternative' kind of project out of it.

While I was playing around to see how slow a shutter speed I can get away with using the extended lens I gave in to temptation and photographed the sky. Plenty of photographers have done this over the years, some producing books of sky photographs. There must be a reason why cloudscapes appeal to us. Here's hoping the weather picks up to perk me up and I can move forward with my ideas.

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