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A friend and I took a trip yesterday to the area near Hamble-le-Rice, which is on the East side of Southampton Water. It was quite a nice day for going out with the cameras, the sun was shining, but the light wasn't harsh, and we got a good sunset too!

I'm still mastering the art of using grad filters on landscape (or waterscape) pictures, and I know I need to get some "hard" grads as all I have at the present are soft. I also need to get a non grad ND filter to allow me to "stop down" to get longer exposures. Netherless I think I got some good shots of the sunset, including a quite nice HDR image.

Whilst we were out, my new Canon 5d Mark II arrived at home (with the 24-105mm lens). Looking forward to trying that out, it supposed to be rather good at landscapes!

Gallery: Hamble January 2001
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This Thursday (8th Jan 2009) I popped into the Light Lounge in Basingstoke at the suggestion of a friend of mine. He is the sound-man and compère for "Three on Thursday", a gig consisting of three bands, and he thought I might like to come along and take some pictures of the bands performing.

The first of the three were a little too loud for me. They like to play really hard and loud (amp set on eleven!), but with out ear protection, I couldn't get close enough to get some pictures of them.

The second band, The Mundane Mondays, were much friendlier on my ears. They kicked out some great up-tempo guitar driven tunes, and at one point showed versatility by the singers excellent version of the Run DMC hit "It's Tricky".

The third and headline act was Kingston based Cats and Criminals, who were very slick and had a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm in their performance. Catch some of their tunes at their MySpace or Facebook pages:

http://www.myspace.com/catsandcriminals
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cats-and-Criminals/33218975595

All shots were taken with my Canon 40d at ISO 1600, with a f1.8 50mm lens. Noise at that ISO is acceptable, though I am hoping to upgrade to a 5d Mark II later this year which should allow me to get better shots in low light.

Gallery: The Light Lounge - 8th Jan 2009
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Saturday the 27th of December 2008 saw the annual "Christmas Leave on the Line" event at the Watercress Line in Alresford, UK.

I and a few friends went along for the day, dressed up in 1940's clothing. Though my Canon 40d did not look particularly "period" - but then nor did the plethora of digital camera's used by many of the participants. One of my friends did take along a period camera for the day, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results once he gets the film developed.

I took just over a hundred shots on the day, all with the 40d and a f1.8 50mm prime lens.

Gallery: Christmas Leave on the Line
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