This week my day out was a flying visit to Brodsworth Hall and you weren't able to take pictures inside so there are only a few shots. There are some formal gardens and more statues than you could possibly imagine :-).
Inside the hall was quite impressive and the history of the house, family and their servants is laid out in great detail. There will be an update to this section at a later date when I get chance to make a return visit.
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I've also created a third macro section and included among others a picture of a Common Blue butterfly which I took on Saturday at a place called Vicar Water (another flying visit).
This week I was planning to attend my 15th consecutive Cropredy Festival but for reasons I won't go into I didn't make it. Insead I made return visits to a few places I'd visited previously. I've added some new pictures from the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
These include the mask which they use as their emblem. Apparently armour was designed to frighten the enemy as well as protect the wearer. Thing is I've never found Woody Allen awfully scary :-).
For the cavalry demonstration I had to use continuous focus as the single focus just couldn't keep up. This did the trick which is more than I can say for the continuous focus on the D5 the last time I visited. Anyway to cut a long story short, it's a great day out and I certainly recommend it.
Also this week a friend of mine returned from his holiday in Cornwall with a faulty CF card (Agfa CL-20 camera) which had been caused when a dodgy set of alkaline batteries failed while he was taking some shots. He could see 22 images but had somehow lost his other few hundred. As it happened I had been reading in the DPReview forum about some image recovery software so I decided to give it a try. It recovered all his images (except the 22 he could see, strangely). Anyway I'd recommend it if you ever have a similar problem. I then ran CFPrep which I got with my card reader and the cards back to normal now (just as well really as he'd borrowed it from Kath).
I've also updated a couple of the other galleries including a blackmail-worthy picture of my mate Dave in a hat.
This weekend we went into the Peak District and in particular Castleton and Peveril Castle. We arrived in the morning with lots of mist on the hills but this burned off later and the sun actually came out.
Unfortunately the main keep of the castle is being repaired until September and at the moment you can't see anything of it but scaffolding but the views from the castle walls are quite spectacular.
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I will be making a more substantial update next weekend including an update to Kaths site but for now I hope you like my Castleton pictures .
This week I was sent to London on a course. Of course I took my camera and every evening when the course ended I went 'exploring'. The Palace of Westminster (Parliament) is probably the most impressive building I've ever seen. There doesn't seem to be a single part of it which isn't carved or decorated in some way.
The main problem I found with London was that it seems to be one big building site. Anywhere there weren't cranes there seemed to be roadworks. I tried my best to keep them out of the frame in my shots but it wasn't always easy or possible.
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On Thursdays they have a late viewing at the British Museum so that's where I went on my last evening. Most of the shots are without flash and were hand held at some silly shutter speeds 1/8, 1/4, etc. though I must admit a lot of them were up against the glass to help steady the camera. I'm getting pretty good at hand holding at slow shutter speeds.
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This weekend our day out was on the (bank holiday) Monday. We started by going to Crich Stand in Derbyshire. The views from the tower are vast and while there we saw a windmill across the valley and decided to head for that. It turned out to be Heage Windmill which has recently been renovated.
After the windmill we headed for our original destination of Black Rocks near Cromford and despite traffic eventually got there. We did a little toadstool hunt, we found quite a few which isn't bad for August.
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This week was a very busy week. As well as the weekend visits I bought another set of batteries and flashed my firmware to 1.10.
The batteries were a set of Ansman 2000 mAh from Budget Batteries. I'd bought a set of GP1800 and Ansman 1800 batteries from them before and was impressed with the service so when I got their news letter anouncing the 2000s I thought I'd give them a go. Anyway we all know that batteries don't last very long on their first few charges so when I put them in I decided to run them down quickly and get them on to their second charge. To cut a long story short using the LCD and flash a lot to run them down I still managed to fill 3 128MB cards. Not bad for a first charge.
The firmware update was very uneventful and the only real difference I've noticed so far is that the shutter lag seems to be non-existant now (it may be my imagination but I don't think so). Maybe it even had something to do with the battery life of the Ansmans.
On the Saturday we paid a visit to Gainsborough Old Hall which is an interesting building and also had some very pretty flowers in the grounds three of which you can see close ups of in the Close-up galleries.
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Sunday started at Conisbrough Castle and we then moved on to a return visit to Brodsworth Hall which we paid a flying visit to a few weeks ago. As a bonus they had a birds of prey event there which gave me a chance to take some 'portraits' of them. I think they turned out quite well.
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