Last year, I was talking to a friend about their experience with Venture Studios. They had a voucher which a friend had bought for them, and had some great pictures taken, but when it came to the viewing the prices took their breath away. A standard medium sized print was something like £450, and came with a side of if-you-buy-right-now-it-will-be-3for2 hard sell. It’s a story I’ve heard many times before, and not only about venture.

I’ve always wanted to do a studio shoot, and this was my ideal opportunity to give it a go. Once word was out, it wasn’t long before I had 9 groups of people who wanted to have a session. It took a lot of organising to get everyone into suitable time slots, and all too quickly the day came.

I had booked Lowford Studio for the day, along with some help from the proprietor Chris, to help me with the lighting. I was then advised to buy a roll of white paper, as I was sure to use some during the shoot, and it would be cheaper to buy a roll than pay for damage by the metre. Chris arranged for purchase and delivery for me. I basically showed up and was ready to shoot.

A quick snap of the studio shoot

On the day, 3 people couldn’t come, mostly due to a nasty flu bug which was around, but to be honest, this eased the pressure a little bit. Chris and I spent a very short time with the lights, as he was suffering from a computer crisis and I hadn’t allowed much time before my first victims clients were due to arrive. Within 15 minutes I was ready.

The first people were a large family group of 10 people, including a 3 month old baby, and grandparents. Talk about in at the deep end! I made a few mistakes, including positioning someone too close to the backlight, and I hadn’t noticed that one of the rear lights was too dark, but overall I was happy with the result. The time my wife and I had spent researching poses, and controlling people correctly was well worth it.

The day went on, I had a couple more disasters, including a bit of confusion with the rear lights at one point, however on the whole the day went well and I now I have lots of people who are very happy with the results. The main issue was because of the high number of toddlers and very young children who can’t be persuaded to smile, and find the whole thing very confusing. My technique was to try to relax the children, and just let the day happen. We spent a long time trying to get a good shot of one girl in particular, but the photo only came right at the end, when everyone was in the foyer putting their coats on. The girl relaxed and started running in and out of the studio with loads of energy. Everyone just let her, and each time she was in shot, I took a photo, and got a great series of shots.

I can’t put many up here until I get permission from other people, but here is a taster.

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Ever since I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7, I’ve been unable to use PSE7. It has annoyed me beyond measure, as I only owned photoshop for a couple of months before moving to Windows 7, and I’ve not managed to find a solution for this, but now I have.

When starting PSE7 in windows 7 (32 bit, ultimate), the option to choose Organise / Edit / Create / Share appears as normal. When clicking on Edit, the editor starts loading, then suddenly en error appears “Adobe Photoshop Elements (Editor) has stopped working.” just as the status bar gets to “initializing menus” or simply “initializing”.

The cause of this problem appears to be the position of the taskbar in windows. I prefer mine on the left, however moving it to the bottom appears to have solved the problem, and now PSE starts successfully.

Let me know if you have encountered the same problem, as I’ve no idea how widespread this issue is.

A problem that I noticed early on, was that the feed from the nest box was strickly black and white. The only light source, even during the day, were the 4 infra red led’s. As I didn’t want to illuminate the box at night, I figured the best thing to do would be to install a window to allow natural light in, and indeed some ready made boxes have small windows.

So, here is what I did. It’s not necessarily what you should do. I did this all in a rush in the hope that Pandora Tit wouldn’t spot me. The best way to describe it is bodged.

The window had to be opaque, so I used what I had to hand, which was two chinese takeaway containers, sandwiching a single ply of tissue. I cut the pieces to shape, around an indentation that they have, added the tissue, and glued the whole thing together, like a sandwich with a glue gun.

From there I had grand plans to cut a hole, with a grove in order to properly install the window. This was way to tricky with the tools that I had, so instead, I cut a hole slightly larger than the indentation, and gluegunned the window over it.

Sorted. Job done. I put it back on the wall and marvelled at the colour pictures. I say marvelled, grimaced is probably more accurate. It’s not exactly technicolour. As you can see I’ve poked through the end of an AV lead, with red, yellow and white connectors, and it’s all a world of grey. Perhaps the tits will look better? At least it’s a slight improvement, and should at least increase the shutter speed of the camera.

Now, all I need is a nest.

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As you know, 2 years ago I set up a bird box camera, but got no birds in the first year. In the second year, I didn’t even look, I was too busy and involved in other things, but I’ve decided, that this year will be successful.

Over those two years, the camera has been outside in the bird box, unused, so I wasn’t sure if it would work. I leant out of the window where the box is located, plugged the camera into the mains, set up the receiver box, and – nothing.

I did lots of fiddling inside, and thought that perhaps the problem was with the camera, maybe the power connector had got dirty or rusty? So, I leant out of the window, lifted the box off, and brought it inside… With hindsight I should’ve checked to see if it was empty first.

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It turns out that I had a blue tit using the box as a roost, and I had just woken him up. So, an hour of chasing a blue tit around my spare room ensued. Well, I didn’t chase it, I just opened the window, watched and hoped it would fly out of it. No chance. My wife worked out that he was attracted to the light, so she held a torch (near my head) and pointed it at the window, before switching the light off.

Big mistake. It’s amazing how a blue tit can look like an eagle when it’s flying at your face in the near dark.

Plan b – place the torch on the windowsill worked like a charm.

24 hours later, I reconnected the camera, it’s working flawlessly and my blue tit (named Pandora by my wife) is back in there and asleep. I’m disappointed that the image is black and white though. Perhaps I should install a window and let in some colour…

Two years ago, I decided that I wanted a webcam in a nest box. I spent some time doing research and discovered two major problems.

Firstly, no webcam was available which was small enough to fit in a bird box – only wireless av ‘spy’ cameras. Secondly, a bird box with built in camera cost way more than I’m willing to spend.

The lack of the most obvious technology struck me as odd. I had assumed that most cameras would be USB, but they weren’t, they were AV and even odder – wireless. These wireless cameras would do what I wanted, and they were cheap. I selected one from ebay which had IR capability and illumination, and adjustable focus as the subject was to be so close to the lens. Ebay was the obvious source, and I ended up with this;

Click for ebay link

It came with a wireless receiver, power supplies, and a 9v battery link for the camera. I rejected this in favour of mains power, as I didn’t want to disturb birds when changing the batteries. All that was missing was the ability to connect via USB. But that was easily fixed by using a EasyCap, again very cheap and readily available from ebay.

A word of advice about the EasyCap – it defaults to “Digital TV” as its input, which is a bit rubbish, as it doesn’t have a digital receiver. When trying to use it, be sure to go to options and select “Composite AV”.

Now all I needed was a bird box, and to install the camera. A quick trip to B&Q and I had a box for just £5. Then installation was simply a case of drilling a hole for the power lead, and another for the aerial (the vertical wire in the photo above). Then I used a glue gun to hold the camera in place.

Everything was setup, and all I needed now, was a willing bird. This was my first failure…

One month later, and I’m back at Core, near Chichester, this time with Derek who has a 20D, 17-40 and 70-200 F4 lenses. All the photos show are my own, with the exception of the one where I’m driving. That shot was Derek’s idea, as he realised I could easily and safely get the front wheels airbourne. Interestingly, I didn’t ground the suspension arms on that run, so perhaps it’s the way forwards!

If anyone knows a fix for this, let me know.

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In that last photo you can also see the camcorder mounted. The video is on youtube – it’s 10 minutes long.

Many of these photos were taken by James Dick, but I have uploaded them here so that I can share them with other people.

This trip was to core 4×4 near chichester, on a pay’n'play day to try out the Jimny for the first time. I had great fun, even if I did manage to fill my footwell with mud. I now need to fit some recovery points and go out again

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Over the past year, I’ve shot 3 rolls of Kodachrome, and a few weeks ago I sat down to scan them with my not so trusty Plustek 7200. After faffing with drivers (again) and software for an hour or so, I finally managed to start scanning.

What came out was a world of disappointment. The scanner just can’t handle Kodachrome, and even on films that it can manage, the quality is just appalling. The sharpness is good, but the colours and contrast sucks.

So, I’ve bought an expensive second hand scanner instead. It’s a Nikon Coolscan 4000ED which I bought from a friend. I’ve only spend 30 mins with it, and scanned a few random slides to see if it works well, and I’m really pleased.

Here is a gallery of some of the Plustek scans, with their Nikon counterparts. The Nikon scans are as is, without setting the scanner up properly, or calibrating anything, or even blowing the dust off. I can’t wait to spend some time getting the scans perfect tonight.

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I’m a very happy bunny. Time to buy some more film.

All photos were taken with my Pentax ME Super, on Kodachrome 64 with either my 50mm f1.7, or 28mm f2.8 pentax lenses.

On the 5th August, Hampshire played Yorkshire in the Pro 40 league. It was a great game to watch and went down to the very last ball. Entering the final over, Hampshire were trailing by 9 runs.

It was also floodlit. It was really strange watching the moon rise, whilst watching a game of cricket.

Enjoy the photos.

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I got my test roll back today, and as is so often the case, I’ve been really disappointed with the quality of the film, but the photos are great. On the other hand, perhaps I asked too much of the film and got the exposure all wrong?

So what are my thoughts? Well, it’s fun and different, that’s for sure. However I think I need to make a couple of modifications. Firstly, the viewfinder – it needs upgrading. Looking through a single rectangle doesn’t work, as a minimum, you need two rectangles. This is probably going to be too tricky to do, both in terms of focal length and general aim, so I’m going to try a gun sight. It won’t help my composition, but should at least allow me to centre my shots.

Secondly, the wrist strap. I thought it was ‘useless’, but now I realise it is more attention seeking than Paris Hilton. Too many of my shots feature it, although never on all three parts as they aren’t lined up.

Finally, it’s a good shutter speed for panning, giving a good level of background blur. Here is my favorite shot of the film;

GT40, robot 3 camera test shot

I wanted to try panning, so went to a place I thought might have some good passing cars, just the otherside of my village. As it was, the parking place was way lower than the road, and of the first 4 cars, one was a TVR, and the other was this GT40, a replica I assume. I lucked out and got a great photo.

It does show the difficulty I have in aiming, especially vertically. I must fix that. Anyway, I’ve put it on flickr and added it to ‘score my car. I can’t wait to see the comments. I’m expecting scores in the 3/10 range, especially as most photos in that group are uber sharp. This is a bit out there for them, lets see what they say…