steve – Page 17

August 29, 2012August 29, 2012

Mifsuds – something we’ll never see in Birmingham

If you’re a photographer or like me someone who occasionally pretends to be one you may already know the name. Mifsuds are a small independent photography shop, located in Brixham.

I’ve bought from them in the past and today traded some stuff in for a new lens (EF 200mm f/2.8 L if you’re interested), but the post isn’t about that. It’s more about the shop, as the title it’s something we’ll probably never see in Birmingham again.

The shop is a treat:

Stock – lots of it (although not the lens I wanted – they are ordering it and posting it to me)
2nd hand gear (some of mine now!) – plenty of options
Staff – Staff that have knowledge/interest

The closest thing we had recently was Jacobs, although a chain (now sadly gone) they had a similar setup. Previous to this, probably back in the 90’s we had the Camera House. There were some regional fairly grumpy photostudios with a small photographic sales section bolted on (thinking of one near Acocks Green). It’s a fairly sad state of affairs that a city of one million can’t support a decent photo store.

I don’t know if Birmingham could support a Midsuds – I guess the mindset of us Brummies is the cost is king, maybe we value the cost over service?

Really the point of this post is visit your local ‘Midsuds’ spend money there – when they’ve gone all we’ll be left with is Jessops and Currys/PC World/Comet.

If you’re interested Mifsuds can be found here:

27-29 Bolton St
Brixham
South Devon
TQ5 9BZ

and online here: http://www.mifsuds.com

August 28, 2012

Hello

just one of those posts to say I’ve not forgot to post here. I really haven’t been up to much to be honest.

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012

Ditching things

A new series on which I reflect on clearing out things form the past. Tonight it’s home cinema:

Well I should start at the beginning. I was a slow adopter to so called home cinema. In fact I’ve only ever had one attempt at this. The kit came as part of my old Sony 32″ CRT TV. I guess it was a little sweetener to soften the £1199 that it cost (Home Cinema kit was free). The TV has long since gone, but the system still remained – possibly due to fact that the rear speakers were attached to the wall. In its life it had probably been switched on less than 20 times, a few of these accidental when I couldn’t find the Wii plug.

So it’s 2012 and wife comes home with paint (£5 from John Lewis Clearance) and a few ideas about changing the room around. I thought about it and decided the Home Cinema was to go. So with a lick of paint, the holes in the wall have gone – the amplifier and speakers set will so go soon (probably to the British Heart Foundation shop in Acocks Green). In truth the room was never set up for the system correctly – the main left and right speakers had very little separation.

Not too sure if I’ll go down the amp route again, maybe next time something with just a couple of speakers (and maybe a separate bass unit) like one of the Bose multimedia offering (though probably not the Bose system).

July 19, 2012

Project Kingfisher update

Just in case anyone was wondering what happened. Well weather happened, you may have noticed. I made a decision not to do anything near Kingfishers (not that I managed to see any) as they are probably having a bad enough time with rain, increased water levels and probably a more scarce food source.

So until things improve I’ll keep well clear.

June 29, 2012July 1, 2012

Photoshop CS6

Time is a healer, but for dodgy versions (we’ll say no more) of photoshop – time certainly isn’t.

Things change, I’ve changed and it’s time to look forward. However looking forward with Adobe can be expensive, certainly when the future is prefixed with the initials CS. I’ve ranted about Adobe’s software costs before, and whilst Lightroom is now a much more sensible £100 it’s still the exception. CS6 is great, I know I’m trying it.

But CS6 has a problem. It’s £667, Adobe’s banking system still hasn’t worked out exchange rates yet, so in the US it’s $649 which is £413 (ex Vat) – ok the ‘real’ UK price is around £500 – which is still bloody expensive, but less of a kick in the nads. Suddenly something I once discounted as being utterly stupid is now looking sensible. It’s an Adobe subscription for Photoshop. Currently around £17 a month or just over £200 a year. Spread over 3 years its about even with the initial purchase price. But this is Photoshop, they’ll be a £200 upgrade if I bought it, so it’s looking even ‘cheaper’.

So what’s it like then, sort of like this….

CS6

On the face on it, it looks much the same – although with the darker interface that Lightroom introduced to me. It’s smooth and fast (running on a Mac Mini – i5 2.3 ghz, 8gb Ram), still copes well with a number of images thrown at it. Slight tweaks to the UI are taking a little while to get used to. It would be nice if it went completely full screen like Lightroom (maybe it does, I’ve just not found out how to yet). My actions I imported from CS3 seem to have a manual element to them – but on the whole happy with the application. So much so that I’ll kick off the subscription once the 30 day trial is up.

Some random images I was messing with….

CS6

Found some nice features in the Save for Web module – seems now you can add a bit of info in the JPEG file. So a Copyright notice can be there – will look to see if further manipulation is possible.