Many photographers think that the only way to isolate subjects within a scene, especially in portraiture is to buy, and use a f/1.4 aperture lens, there are even f/1.2, and f/0.95 lenses available. When photographers discuss having a blurred background to images, to create subject isolation as a compositional aid, they are talking about the depth of field produced by a specific lens / camera combination. Depth of field, and therefore isolating a subject within an image is primarily obtained by the closeness to the subject, and distance from the subject to the background. The aperture setting, and also the size of the camera sensor all play a part in this. I use an app on my mobile phone called “PhotoPills”, this is a very informative, and invaluable app for photographers. The “PhotoPills” app gives information about sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset times based on your location, exposure value calculator, field of view calculator. The "PhotoPills" depth of field (DoF) calculator to enables a photographer to determine the depth of field for his camera, and lens combination. Mastering aperture priority mode on your camera is a key skill to learn, often it’s a matter of choosing the correct aperture for each situation. In this photo of yours truly, taken by my young lady in a heritage railway carriage, I’ve deliberately set the aperture at f/2 on the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens, before handing the camera to her, and you can see with the sharp focus on my eyes, my clothes, and the backrest of the train seat are blurred, this is a deliberate portrait rather than a contextual view of me sitting in a railway carriage, for a contextual view f/5.6 could have been selected, if an f/1.4 aperture had been chosen my ears, and nose would also have started to blur. Insects, and small mammals / reptiles are notoriously difficult to select the correct aperture (sometimes termed “f stop”) for depth of field, and therefore sharpness over the whole of the creature. How many times has a judge commented on an insect photo about the wings, or tail being out focus? For this lizard photo I selected f/7.1, (more by accident than design) on a 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, the focus on the eye is perfect, the foreground, and background rocks are defocused, in this situation f/5.6 or even an f/6.3 aperture may not have given the correct sharpness on the reptile. This butterfly photo is a complete failure, a grab shot, taken at f/5.6, on the 70-300mm telephoto lens, I’ve got one wing in focus!! A choice of f/7.1 may have improved the focus across the scene. For landscape photographers, choosing the correct aperture to achieve foreground to background sharpness is important. Many landscape photographers suggest setting the aperture somewhere between f/8 to f/16 and focusing a third of the way into the scene. In this scene of the Cow and Calf rocks on Ilkley Moor, I’ve chosen f/11 and deliberately focused on the foreground rock to capture the engraved graffiti, this is a contextual scene, with the heather, and Cow and Calf rocks acceptable, rather than “tack sharp”. Remember failure in photography should assist us to learn, rather than discourage us from taking great photographs. Get out there with your camera and enjoy this wonderful hobby.

David Stokes has sent the attached vintage folder that photographs would have been enclosed in during the old days. I am sure we all remember sending films off or taking them into a shop for developing and printing, you probably don’t get the same feeling of expectation or failure with digital as we did with film especially transparencies. The advice given is perhaps out of date now but not pressing the shutter unless focus is correct is still valid today.

Recently I watched a YouTube video by Peter Coulson, asking a question about having too many lenses, in Peter’s case I would suggest a definite yes, as he had three 50mm lenses, and when he showed portraits taken by the three lenses it was difficult to discern the difference between them, in summation Peter will be selling two of his 50mm lenses. While I have a reasonable collection of lenses I only tend to head out on a shoot with two, possibly three lenses, tailored to the scenario for the shoot, as I like to travel light. For my recent Gannet Dive Experience for example I took the Fuji 16-80mm f/4 zoom, the Fuji 70-300mm zoom lens, and the two camera bodies. This photo of a Gannet emerging from the water with a freshly caught fish in its mouth was taken with the Fuji 16-80mm lens, at 35mm, f/8, 1/3200, ISO 640. On my indoor model shoots I will take the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 zoom, and the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 prime lens, this photo of Jayne as “English Rose” was taken with the Sigma 30mm at f/1.4, ISO 200, 1/105 with the Fuji X-T3. For outdoor model shoots, I will often use the Fuji 16-80 f/4 zoom, partnered this time with the TT Artisans 56mm f/1.8 prime lens, and usually the two camera bodies to avoid changing lenses on location. Travel photography requires a slightly different approach, usually just the one camera body, and the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8, this one lightweight lens takes the place of three prime lenses and provides the flexibility to work in low light. Last year I took the TT Artisans 27mm pancake lens and the Fuji 18-55mm lens to Skiathos, but I hardly used the 27mm lens. This year in Menorca I had two lenses the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 zoom, and the Fuji 70-300mm zoom as I knew that we were staying near to a nature reserve. This tiny Holly Blue butterfly was taken with the 70-300mm lens at 300mm, ISO 400, 1/240 on the Fuji X-S20, while walking through the nature reserve. The Fuji 16-80mm f/4 lens is invaluable for landscape photography, and I often pair this lens with the Samyang AF 12mm f/2, most of last years “Churches” project was taken with the 12mm lens, as can be seen with this image of the church at Markby, taken on the Fuji X-T3, f/11, ISO 400, 1/550. The Samyang 12mm has also been used on the Mam Tor, and Whitby outings, the lens is also ideal for night photography. As I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve viewed several YouTube videos of photographers extolling the virtue of the one camera, one lens approach, usually a 50mm prime (35mm on APS-C cameras), and this is possibly the right approach for street photography, or documentary style, and I have emulated this approach in the past with the TT Artisans 27mm lens, and one camera, yes it is liberating, easy to carry, and produces a unique style to photography. Indeed when I used Olympus cameras the E-PL7 married with the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 was a pocketable travel companion which I still miss for simplicity. So, in conclusion do I have too many lenses?

Now, this isn’t one of those “click bait” articles, where one design of a camera is denounced over the other. Both DSLR, and mirrorless digital cameras are capable of taking some incredible images, and when viewed as a print any viewer would be unable to discern which camera took the photo. This article was prompted by a friend of mine seeking advice for lens choices for his Canon 700D, he brought the camera around, and he has the Tamron 18-400mm lens, and a shorter focal length zoom lens. He is finding the Tamron lens with the camera body to be quite heavy, the lens itself weighs 710g!! My friend is an amateur photographer, and only uses the camera on occasion. Now as I handled the camera, I realised how different a DSLR camera was to handle, it took me a while to find out how to select one of the nine autofocus points, and using the LCD screen to choose camera settings was totally alien to me. The optical viewfinder was fine as I could see the camera settings, metering, and the focus points. My first interchangeable lens camera was actually a DSLR, a Nikon EM, purchased in 1980, I was used to the manual focusing via the prism, and I took some wonderful photos with the camera. When digital compact cameras became available I bought an Olympus C2 to replace the Nikon. I bought my first mirrorless interchangeable lens camera in 2010, an Olympus E-PL1, and I didn’t have a clue how to use it properly, and mainly used the camera as a “point and shoot”. Over the years I have progressed through Sony, back to Olympus, and finally Fuji, all mirrorless cameras. The electronic viewfinder (EVF), “live” LCD back screen, lightweight crop sensor bodies and lenses, with usually simple controls are all plus factors. Conversely poor autofocus, and poor battery life were characteristics of early mirrorless cameras, but with many mainstream camera manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Fuji all producing mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, these early traits have disappeared. My newest Fuji has a battery life of around 800 shots, improved autofocus with eye / face detection, bird, mammal, and aeroplane modes providing confidence in obtaining quality images. If you currently own, and use a DSLR don’t rush out and purchase a mirrorless camera until your present camera is unusable, or outdated, instead concentrate on your photography technique, and use quality lenses suitable for your needs. I showed my friend how to use aperture settings to isolate / include components within a scene, and how to select (when I found out!!) the autofocus points. I also advised him to purchase a Canon 24mm EF-S f/2.8 lens for his camera, it’s an absolute bargain at £160 new, and the reviews are very complimentary. A small pancake lens such as this will make the camera lighter, and make you want to go out more with the camera.

Good Morning All I took the photograph of the Comma butterfly last week on our outing to the Kirkby Gravel Pits. To give you more information which might or might not help you, I took it on my Nikon D7500 APS-C sensor camera with a 105mm lens attached, this gives a focal length of about 157mm equivalent on a full sensor sensor camera, I manually set the ISO to 640 as it was a bright day and I wanted a decent F stop which I set manually at F8 to give a bit more depth of field and a shutter speed of 1/640 which the camera set, I also set my camera to slightly underexpose to try and stop any burn out. The next trick was to slowly creep up on the Comma as you still need to be as close as you can to the subject to make it a good size in the image without too much cropping. I am sure you have all seen the results from the third round of the LPA battles at Barton, if you haven’t Louth came first with 173 points which I am reliably informed that puts us 5th and into this years final, which I hope a lot of our members will attend, news of the date etc. to follow. A big thank you to Dave Turner for organising our prints and attending all of our rounds with the prints. Well that’s it for summer, enjoy the break and get out and about taking photographs ready for when we restart in September. I won’t be doing a newsletter during the break unless there is anything to report but please feel free to send blogs to Derek for the website if you have attended something interesting or if you just want to demonstrate a particular technique. There are things to be getting on with during the break, don’t forget to keep doing the yearly project, numbers, there are also competitions to take for, Panoramic Landscapes (PDI), local competition, photos taken on your mobile or compact camera (PDI) and a print competition, Monochrome, all these competitions have an open competition as well. The first night back we will hold a series of mini lectures by members, 15 minutes to show us what you have done over summer, you may want to take part in that one as well. Regards Graham

The 3rd round of the LPA Print Battles was held at Barton last night, this contest between Louth, Barton, and Lincoln. Martyn Wrigg introduced John Whaler as the judge for the evening, referring to his character as “erudite”, which turned out to be very prophetic. John was excellent as a judge, not only judging the prints on technical merit, but also quality of composition, storytelling, and that indefinable sense of a “great” image, all genres appeared to be judged without any partiality. Three members from Louth attended the Battles, and tension mounted as more Louth prints were added to the “hold back” pile. After an excellent buffet supplied by Barton Camera Club, John proceeded to award points for the “hold backs”, with many of our prints being awarded the highest score of 20 points, some of which are depicted here. When the scores were added up Louth was placed 1st, with Barton, and Lincoln trailing behind with equal points, thus it was an excellent night for Louth. The full results for the competition are being tabulated by Dave Turner and will be circulated later today. A big thank you to Barton for hosting, and provision of a superb buffet. Thank you also to John Whaler for his excellent critique, and impartiality in judging.

Last Sunday five of us visited Kirkby Gravel Pits for a club outing, the weather as it has been for all our outings was warm and sunny. It was my first visit to the gravel pits and I was very impressed with the reserve, it is one of many Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust reserves, and the moment you walked through the gate there were plenty of insects about including many damselflies. The two large lakes had wildlife on but difficult to photograph. We spotted and photographed some Willow Emerald damselflies which were first recorded in the UK in 2009, they have spread now particularly in East Anglia, it was a first for me though. We saw many different Dragonflies and Damselflies even if we didn’t always manage to photograph them as they wouldn’t always land, we also saw quite a few butterflies which have been a bit scarce this year. It was certainly a good afternoon and the reserve was well worth visiting.

Good Morning All I haven't taken any photographs this week so this is another one from Thorpe Camp. Hopefully there will be plenty taken this afternoon. No meeting was held at the club last week, instead some members are going to Kirkby Gravel Pits this Sunday afternoon (today) meeting at 13:30. Next Wednesday 24th July is our last event until after the summer break, an LPA Battle competition is being held at Barton camera club meeting at the Barton Corn Exchange, 8 Market Place, Barton DN18 5DA at 19:30. There will be some members from Louth attending and any member is welcome to attend. Regards Graham

On Friday morning 5th July, Paul Gray and I were on the road at 5:30 am driving to Bridlington harbour for the 4 hour Gannet Diving Experience which had been organised by Steve Race. Last year the Gannet trip had to be cancelled twice owing to unfavourable weather, but this day dawned clear, and bright, we made good time driving to Bridlington, and had time for a coffee before parking up at the harbour for our rendezvous with Steve Race, the skipper Paul Chapman, and the boat the Yorkshire Lass II. After a short briefing, we were aboard the boat and motoring out to Bempton Cliffs where we would be taking photos of the Gannets. The sea state was relatively calm, but with a slight swell which unfortunately caused two photographers to succumb to sea sickness. As we motored along the coast we saw many Razorbills, Guillemots, Puffins, and Gannets on the water. Once at Bempton Cliffs, the boat eased out to seaward, and the skipper Steve Chapman began throwing fish out to the Gannets. The birds descended in a squawking mob, whirling, circling the boat, the air was filled with birds, and noise. For photography, I had already prepared the settings for my Fuji X-S20, shooting at 8fps, ISO 640 (I probably could have reduced this, but I may have missed a shot in the process) f/6.4, and shutter speed 1/3000. I began the shoot with the Fuji 70-300mm lens, but as the birds moved in closer to the boat, I had to swap the lens to the Fuji 16-80mm lens. With so much chaos, and movement photography was simply a matter of “spray and pray”, Steve Race advised that we might have to turn off any “bird autofocus” settings, but as the Fuji appeared to be coping, I left my “bird autofocus” on. Because we were photographing white birds in very bright sunlight the exposure compensation was set at -2. Overall, we’ve been able to take some amazing photos, and watching the Gannets at sea was a wonderful experience. We also made it back to Louth in good time for the Society Annual Dinner, although this feeding experience was a lot calmer, and leisurely.