Richard Hobbs

I was going to wait for this particular purchase, but while investigating potential digital SLR cameras for the future, I found a great “deal of the day” at Jessops in Cambridge – a Nikon D5000 camera body, an 18-55mm VR (image stabilization) lens, a 70-300mm lens (Nikon lenses are to be multiplied by 1.5 to get full-frame equivalents, so they were offering the equivalent of a 27-82.5mm lens and a 105-450mm lens), an 8GB SDHC memory card, a case to carry it all and 40 free 6×4″ prints – all for £599.00 inc. VAT. Not a bad deal at all.

Anyway, I’ve only just started playing around with the camera and getting used to the layout and all of it’s features. Most of the features that I used regularly are the same as my 12 year old Olympus 2020ZOOM which I’ve been using for the last couple of years. The main differences are the fact that this camera has many more features (which I intend to start using, of course!) and it obviously takes pictures of much better resolution and quality.

I’ve only taken around 150 shots with the camera in total so far, but here are a few of the better ones…

Cake!

The above photo was taken at a focal length of 280mm (full-frame equiv. would, of course, be 420mm) with the lens itself on Macro mode (not entirely sure what that does yet. I know what it does on the camera, but not the lens!). The aperture was F/5.6, shutter speed 1/125s, ISO 200.

Cambridge Science Park

This one was shot at 30mm focal length, F/4.5 with shutter speed of 1/1250s. You may notice that this photo is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo (i.e. has deeper, richer colours and more detail in the shadows and highlights). I actually took 3 photos for this – a “normal” photo, a dark photo at -2 EV (exposure compensation) and a light photo at +2 EV. I then used Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft to combine the images into what you see here.

Orion’s Belt

On the evening this was taken, at around 21:30, I went outside to attempt to photograph the moon. Well… i couldn’t actually find the moon in the perfectly clear night sky, so I gave up and zoomed in as far as I could to the star in the middle of Orion’s belt. According to Wikipedia, this star is 1340 light years away and is known as “Alnilam” or “Epsilon Orionis“.

Anyway, the above photo was taken at 300mm, F/5.6 and shutter speed of 1/1.3s. Again, i used ISO 200.

The Moon

Later on in the same evening, the Moon finally appeared above the roof of one of the surrounding houses, so here it is!

The moon was taken at 300mm, F/6.3 with shutter speed of 1/400s and ISO 200 again (I’ve not played around with the ISO yet). You may also realise that even at 300mm (450mm equiv.) the moon will not fill the frame. This photo is cropped as tighly as I’d like, so most of the outside of the photo has actually been removed, leaving just the tiny moon in the middle, which now, of course, fills most of the photo.

So, there we go! That’s the best of the phots I’ve taken so far! I hope you like them! Do feel free to leave a comment on the blog page, if you like!

More of the Nikon D5000 DSLR Initial Test Shots

I’ve not posted for a couple of weeks, mainly due to lack of time, but nevertheless, here I am again to report on a pair of very enjoyable weekends!

First of all though, I would like to state something that surprised me yesterday… the lead up is as follows; my Grandad, when he owned the Matchless, rode an average of around 120 miles per year (between 1989 and 1999 anyway). When he left the bike to me, it stayed in my parents’ garage for 8 or 9 years doing 0 miles per year. In April this year (2008), I brought the bike home and at the MOT that followed at the beginning of July, the odometer read 31666 miles.

The thing that surprised me is that 11 weeks later (today, roughly), the odometer reads 32440 miles, meaning I’ve ridden 774 miles in 11 weeks! I hadn’t realised quite how much I was enjoying the bike until I realised that!

Anyway… onto the weekends… it started on Sunday 14 September, with a bike meeting at the Silver Ball Café at Reed.

Bike Meeting at Silver Ball Café, Reed

This is one of the first events (albeit an incredibly minor event, bordering on not being an “event” at all due to the fact that it’s not organised by anyone in particular, and is actually just a collection of like minded individuals who all happen to be at the same place at the same time) that I’ve been able to take the motorbike to, so I was very pleased about this!

One of the guys from the AJS & Matchless Owners Club and I rode down together from Huntingdon and met up with several other AJS & Matchless owners when we got there. We ended up having a few cups of tea, a few full English breakfasts between us and a lot of talk about bike mechanics – what could be better? Photos of the Silver Ball bike meeting can be found here: Silver Ball Café Bike Meeting Photos

Someone then mentioned that there was supposedly a bike show on in Meldreth at the same time, so we all decided, when we’d finished our cups of tea, to ride there and try to get in with the bikes. This, we managed, although not without a little negotiation with the guy manning the gate!

Three bikes at the Meldreth Car & Bike Show

We then stayed at the car & bike show for a couple of hours, drinking more tea, eating cake, and talking about more bike mechanics mixed in with all aspects of old vehicles! Photos of the Car & Bike Show at Meldreth can be found here: Car & Bike Show, Meldreth Photos

I arrived home at 5pm that afternoon having had a great day out with the motorbike!

Now on to the weekend just gone…

On Saturday, Sarah and I attended the Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre at Cranford.

Motorbikes at Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008

We arrived on site at around 09:30, whereupon I had my first experience of riding on damp, long grass with a passenger! Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult and the bike stayed shiny side up for the entire trip across the field! All 200 yards of it! We then settled up at the bike display area until 2pm when it was the motorbikes’ turn to ride around the arena and have their owners tell everyone about their bikes! Thankfully, this went well too:

Me in the Arena at Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008 talking to the crowd about the bike!

After a grand total of 5 laps of the arena, I rode the bike back to the display area and Sarah and I then left just before 5pm after a very enjoyable, although hot due to biking gear, day! Photos of the Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre can be found here: Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008 Photos

I had originally planned to go back to the rally on Sunday to (a) go through the same experience as I had on Saturday and (b) to collect my brass plaque that all exhibitors receive for being so kind as to bring along a vehicle of some sort (The plaques were only being given out on the second day at this particular rally), but on Saturday evening I heard a knock at the door – it was one of the guys from the AJS & Matchless Owners Club cursing me for being ex-directory and also inviting me to another run to the Silver Ball Café at Reed with some other AJS & Matchless owners!

I decided to phone up the organisers of the Kettering rally and see if they would be so kind as to post my brass plaque to me, and having received the answer “yes”, I decided that another day out with the AJS & Matchless people would be much more fun than another day at the rally! It’s not that the rally wasn’t enjoyable, far from it – it was great actually, but two days in a row, spending 7 hours on-site each day is quite a commitment, and although the people there are great to talk to, I could never turn down a day out with my fellow AJS & Matchless owners!

So anyway, overall, it’s been an eventful and enjoyable pair of weekends! I just want summer to stay with us now! Riding isn’t so much fun in winter, unfortunately!