Bath

I’ve only visited Bath once, in October 2016. I had to go to Chippenham for an induction with M+W and had a bit of time before my flight from Bristol back to Edinburgh, so stopped off on the way. I was very impressed by this beautiful City. I wish I’d had more time to explore. I also had time to speak at length with a homeless girl mid to late 20s, who told me her story. I can discern between fact and fiction quite quickly, and it was obvious this girl had told me the truth, and had suffered much paid. The encounter affected me for several months. I could not stop thinking about her situation, and was annoyed with myself I hadn’t done more to help. Surely there must be more that can be done for youngsters like her?

Back to the photographs. The camera I had with me was a Panasonic DMC FZ-1000, which I’d bought from new at about £ 650, intending to use it as a travel zoom. Although it had its uses, I found the very small sensor was not producing the image quality I was after. I also found the dynamic range was very limited, or at least much more so compared to my Canon 5D Mark IV. And I never liked the electronic viewfinder. It was also a bit bulky. The best thing for me was the portability / weight for the relatively long reach (25 – 400mm FF equivalent) . It was sharp enough even at the 400 end and OK if you could fill the frame. But anything that you needed to crop, the sensor size was so small that the IQ was unusable. At least for me. I ended up getting around £ 300 for it on e-bay.

Talking about E-Bay sales – how can the government / HMRC come to the conclusion shown in the article below? We have already paid income tax and then VAT on the items when purchased, yet the government now wants to tax you again when you sell the item second hand. Is there no end to the taxes they levy upon us? WTAF?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/vinted-depop-ebay-hmrc-tax-how-much-b2472249.html

Here are my favourite 5 mages from the Bath trip, taken with this camera. I will admit to changing one of the skies, and in the first image you will see blow highlights in the top right. Just to say the 5D IV would have handled the tricky lighting a lot better hence I no longer have this camera.

One of the things I do notice about cropped frames, or in this case a 1″ sensor, is they are totally unforgiving if you over expose, even slightly. You will never pull that detail back from the raw file . It isn’t there to begin with. And when you do expose for the highlight, the shadows will be so underexposed you will never be able to bring them back without serious noise issues. Tripods and filters negates the reason for having a travel camera in the first place, so you are left bracketing exposures then a load of post. Not for me.

My replacement travel camera is the Sony A-6000, which I find superb for the purpose. I can fit it in my pocket, and the results are much better. I’ll do an article on this as a travel camera soon,