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Canon G1x

Canon G1x

Canon G1 x

Twelve Months with a Canon G1x (Comments and Gallery)

It is just over a years since I purchased a reconditioned (Canon G1x) from Canon in the Irish republic.

I posted a personal review of the camera at the start of March here: “Canon G1x review“, so to avoid myself doing a repeat here you can read what I felt about the camera back then from this link.

I have taken about four thousand images with this camera in the first year and I have to say I just love it, before I decided to get it I was looking to replace a Contax G2 camera as I was finding it very hard to get film processed without posting it back to the UK. The idea of a compact system camera i.e. one that can work with extra items like a external flash gun, had been something I was very interested in.

For many years compact digital camera’s have not been of a good enough quality to consider purchasing and using if you intend to produce marketable images, I.e. anything from stock photography to commissioned work. The sensors where just to small to produce clean and detailed enough images.

From the moment I took collection of this camera I have to say it’s impressed me, I have most often used Film or Digital slr equipment apart from the Contax G2 that I had for many years. The camera is of good enough size a weight to feel like a good pro level compact and it is built to last that’s for sure. The body is equipped with every feature that an advanced user could need and is identical to a Digital slr.

I was looking for a camera that I could keep in a bag as a backup to my slr’s and this camera has been that, however I have found myself looking at what it is I need to do before I go out and deciding what type of Camera I need with me. I feel that If I have been booked to do some work then a customer needs to see an slr and the results are of a higher quality, but not by much. How and ever for personal work like this blog or books, holidays and events then this camera is perfect. I have produced double A3 wide prints from its images and they look as good as my Nikon pro equipment. It has all the needed quality, is fast to use acts exactly like I need it to and produces great results.

I was looking for a compact camera that didn’t make me feel like I wished I had packed an slr and this Canon camera is it, it has always filled me with confidence and been a pleasure to use.

Canon G1x Gallery

Canon G1x landscape 1

Canon G1x landscape 2

Canon G1x landscape 3

Canon G1x landscape 4

Canon G1x landscape 5

Canon G1x landscape 6

Canon G1x landscape 7

Canon G1x landscape 8

Hay Bales – Black and white

Round Bales black and white 1
Hay Bales, coolagh, County Kilkenny
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington

Make Hay while the sun shines

This time of year in county kilkenny brings many great subject to take photographs of, Freshly cut fields of hay are most definitely one of them. June and July have been wonderful warm months and the farmers have been very lucky at last. This Time last year we had weeks of heavy rain and even floods.

I captured these Hay bales before they were rapped, early morning when the mist still sat on the fields, it lifted soon after but I feel it made for some great images.

Round Bales black and white 2

Round Bales black and white 4

Round Bales black and white 3

Duncannon Fort, County Wexford

Duncannon Fort 3
All images Nikon D700
Duncannon Fort, County Wexford
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington


Duncannon Fort

If you plan to visit County Wexford, Duncannon fort is well worth a visit, I took the images in this post on a visit earlier in the summer.

The fort was built in 1588 in the expectation of an attack on the area by the Spanish Armada. The Fort is surrounded by a 30 ft high dry moat and has one of the oldest lighthouses of its kind in Ireland. All the major buildings in the Fort surround a parade ground. A walk around the outer ramparts afford spectacular views across the estuary to Co. Waterford and down to Hook Head. Located at a lower level than the moat is the croppy boy cell. After the 1798 rebellion, prisoners were detained here pending transfer to Geneva Barracks for trial and sentencing. An added attraction is the Maritime Museum which charts the maritime history of one of the most dangerous coastlines in Ireland, the Wexford coast.

incorporates a maritime museum, Arts centre, café and craft shop and is open daily to visitors from June to September. Guided tours are available. Duncannon and Fort was the location for the opening scenes of the 2002 remake of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, starring Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris.

Image Gallery

Duncannon Fort 2

Duncannon Fort 4

Duncannon Fort 1

Duncannon Fort 5

Beach sculpture at Tramore, Waterford

beach sculpture at tramore 2
All images canon G1 x
Art students working a a beach sculpture, Tramore, County Waterford
Photography by : Nigel Borrington

Dragon Sculpture

A little while back on a visit to Tramore Beach, County Waterford I photographed these art students working on beach sculpture before a competition the following weekend.

It was amazing to watch them for a while as they practised their projects, the images below are of a dragon that they intended to create on the day.

Gallery

beach sculpture at tramore 4

beach sculpture at tramore 5

beach sculpture at tramore 6

beach sculpture at tramore 1

beach sculpture at tramore 3

Silent Sunday (Sing – A poem).

Sunday evening in county KIlkenny
Sunset over Windgap, County kilkenny
Landscape photography by Nigel Borrington

Sunday and today I just wanted to be silent to be still and think of nothing, so often we hear the sound of voices around us, people who just cannot stop for fear of a gap.

The most I wanted to hear was a song, the song that nature makes on the hillsides.

So a poem for a Sunday evening :

Sing

Today seemed like a day I should be silent.
The silence seemed so absolute, every small sound
reverberating intensely.
My annoying voice would shatter such a perfect peace.
Perhaps a song.
If a song were to break out over this hillside,
causing the grass to move, that might be acceptable.
The silence their audience,
a brilliant song.

I wish it so, but I know my voice has not that song,
and in thinking so I find I’ve lost it altogether.
So I sit back, a supportive member of the audience.

So step up; we’re listening.
We silenced wait for your beautiful lucid song.
Someone to save us from the silence we trapped ourselves in,
afraid to break perfection.
Someone to tell us that imperfection is something that’s okay.

Your song can rescue us.
Your voice can come and let us sing again.
Let your music ring across this silence.
We’ll rise up, a chorus of flaws, and be beautiful.
Set us free.
Sing.

Sophiea · Oct 28, 2011

It’s the weekend so …….

Blackwater river at Youghal
Nikon d700, 18-200mm vr lens, iso 100
Black water river at Youghal, county cork.
Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

It’s the weekend so why not find a coast line to walk along, look at the views and relax yourself.

Stay for the evening and watch the sun go down.

Thank you !

Some flowers to say thank you
Some flowers to say Thank you.

I just wanted to say thank you, since I started posting again on this blog back in February I have got to know some great people, received some wonderful and very welcomed comments and increased the size of my own world. Seeing images and talking to people from almost every corner of the planet.

So thank you to everyone who has been here and I have truly enjoyed seeing your own blogs !

Photoshop : Producing a painting from a photograph

Woodland to Lino cuts image 1
Nikon D7000, 18-200mm lens, iso 100
Grange Crag walk, Co Tipperary
Landscape photography: Nigel Borrington

A very different post today, For many weeks I have just posted photographs and it remains my main interest here but I just wanted for a little time to talk about Abode photo-shop and an application called My-paint.

Art has always been of a big interest to myself and I view all my images as a form of artistic production, some people don’t see photographs as art they are to much of a completed process or they don’t see any artistic process involved in the taking of images using a camera. To a point I do get this view, however I think the speed and directness of a camera can offer results that a painter or an artist with a pencil will not capture.

Here I post some result from working with a photograph in adobe camera raw and then photo-shop, in order to produce more developed results. In the first of the images below I have converted the photograph into black and white then using photo-shops levels and curves tools I have increased the brightness and contract until only the outlines of the trees exists.

In the third image down I have taken one of these black and white images and over painted it with photo-shops brush tool adding layers of different colour.

The last image and painting is taken from the second black and white image loading it into an application called My-paint, this is a free painting tool and is packed with great brush and pen tools. Using it I have created lots of layers of different colours and opacities in order to produce the final result.

Woodland to Lino cuts image 8

Woodland to Lino cuts image 1

Woodland to Lino cuts image 6

Woodland to Lino cuts image painted 22

Stone circle in the comeragh mountains

comeragh mountains stone circle 2
All images using a Sigma SD15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
Comeragh mountains – stone circle
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

Stone circles

Comeragh Mountains stone circle location

For myself I love being out on a summer evening walking in the hills, a lot of the Irish hill sides are defined as common land and even though farmed by the same families for many generations these areas are by law open land.

The Comeragh mountains in county waterford has many locations well worth finding but for myself the most interesting are the neolithic monuments and grave sites.

While out last evening I came across this stone circle resting in one of the many valleys in this area, it once would have been a monumental site with its some eight foot high standing stones used to mark the passing of the farming year.

Ireland has a wealth of prehistoric sites that few since the Christian period pay any attention to, for myself however this is where the true history of Ireland exists, People existed in small communities at a local level, however they had everything in common with and communicated with people throughout Europe.

They existed in nature, out in the wilds and they understood the world around them with their very survival in mind, they held personal skill that they learnt from each other.

This stone circle marks those skill’s very well as measuring the seasons was vital to them.

NB: I have circled the above map to locate the stone circle and give some idea as to its size.

Comeragh mountains stone circle – Gallery

comeragh mountains stone circle 11

comeragh mountains stone circle 1

comeragh mountains stone circle 10

comeragh mountains stone circle 5

comeragh mountains stone circle 9

comeragh mountains stone circle 6

comeragh mountains stone circle 7

comeragh mountains stone circle 8

Comeragh Mountains – Wild cotton grass fields

bog cotton fields 2
All images using a Sigma SD15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
Comeragh Mountains, co.Waterford – Wild cotton grass fields
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington

Wild Cotton grass, Comeragh mountains, county Waterford

Last evening we went for a long walk with our dog through the comeragh mountains and came across an area of Bog cotton, it covered the entire hill side and valley in front of us as we walked through it.

So I just wanted to share this wonderful view and I hope get across just how amazing a view this offers on the hill sides of these mountains in the middle of a very warm July.

Common Grass Cotton

As its other common name, Bog Cotton, might suggest, this is a plant of very damp peaty ground. Its leaves mostly arise from the base of the plant, often being tinged with red or brown. It has tiny insignificant little brown flowers in April and May but it is really when it is in fruit that this becomes a most eye-catching and attractive plant. Borne on 30-50cm high, cylindrical stems, the little seeds are held in fluffy, downy, white tufts which quiver and shake in the wind, a most effective dispersal method. This is a native pant belonging to the family Cyperaceae.

Wild Cotton grass – Gallery

bog cotton fields 3

bog cotton fields 7

bog cotton fields 4

bog cotton fields 6

bog cotton fields 5