Millennium Bridge

I'm not sure why I like this. Maybe because the perspective feels wonky? What with Blackfriars Bridge seeming underneath the Millennium Bridge. And all those people standing on something that looks unsupported?

London Bridge Concourse

So this week's sunny day was Monday, and on my way to lunch, I went to London Bridge and then down and across Tower Bridge. Nice walk, even if the wind was chilly halfway across Tower Bridge. Anyway... London Bridge has a new clock for people to meet under, there's an obligatory Passenger Asleep On A Bench, and the People On The Escalator shot may be one of my favourites from this year already. The last two are the kind of architectural angle-y shots I like. Despite its heavy use over quite a few years, the concourse is still clean and shiny. Somebody cares, or maybe somebody else wrote it into the contract.

Autumn

 

Fujinon XF 18-135 - If I Get A Zoom

So I went back over what I had taken in Photos. Because Photos has the Get Info panel, and that tells you the lens details - at least if the data was available.

Sometime in 2009 I started using the Canon Powershot A590 IS. The lens is said to be 5.8 - 23.2mm, and the Canon specs say that the 35mm equivalent is 35-140mm. I seemed to have stopped using it towards the end of 2011, which is when I stopped going on holidays, and switched to using a C510 phone camera and then the iPhone 4S, sometime in 2012.

In 2013 I started using a Canon EOS1100D, which was an APS-C camera with a 35mm equivalent of 24-80mm. It's a chunky bit of kit.

Sometime in 2014 until sometime in 2018 I started using a Panasonic DMS TZ-40, with a 35mm equivalent of 24-480mm, some of which may be digital zoom. I used the iPhone SE camera for a while between 2019 and 2021.

At the end of 2021 started using the Fujifilm X-E4, with the 50mm-equivalent lens, which I swapped in late 2024 for the 40mm-equivalent pancake lens. Because it's easier to carry and made a change.

None of those cameras were expensive by the standards of the time. The EOS110D was about half the price of the X-E4, which shows in the quality of the Fuji kit. I still have the EOS1100D and the DMS TZ-40.

That Get Info panel also tells you the focal length of the zoom lens. Which is super-useful.

(All sizes are now 35mm-equivalent unless otherwise mentioned.)

The majority of the shots I have kept are taken at one end of the range or the other of the lens. The more zoom it offered, the more I seemed to look for shots that would use that much zoom. A lot of the landscape / cityscape shots I liked enough to keep were either around 35mm or 120mm. Some went the full 480mm the TZ-40 would allow. I feel that 82mm is really just cropping the picture in camera, whereas 100-120mm is a different picture. The silly focal lengths of the TZ-40 were a bit of a spoiler. The shots that have intermediate focal lengths are really me cropping in camera. (Cropping in camera is not a Bad Thing: the picture quality is higher than a cropped picture would be.) All the people shots I like were 120mm or more. Do that with a small camera and no-one will notice. Try to get a 120mm zoom shot of someone sitting a few feet away with an APS-C lens and they will notice. That takes a certain amount of social skills I might not have.

The Fujinon zooms that are not too large, too heavy or too silly, are the XF 16-80, the XF 18-135, the XF 18-120, the XF 16-55, and the XF 18-55. The 18-120 has internal zoom (which is cool), but Fuji says that it is really for videographers. Shame. The x-55's are not zoomy enough: 55mm feels like cutting-out-clutter-around-the-subject. I can see why portrait snappers use it. That leaves the 16-80 and the 18-135. Both are about the same (second-hand) price, size and weight. Both lenses extend during zoom, which is a little... naff, but unavoidable.

Looking at my pictures, the more zoom I have, the more zoomy pictures I can see and will take. On that basis, the answer is the 16-135.

So why am I not rushing onto the Interwebz to buy one?

Zooming is a little like photography candy: it's sweet and addictive. It's one reason I deliberately bought a prime when I got the X-E4. Taking shots with a prime between 35mm and 50mm is a discipline. Anyone can zoom in on a neat detail, and I have enough shots to prove I can do it well, but composing a whole shot is much more of a challenge. So there's that. You know, suffering for my art. And this whole exercise is assuming I am buying second-hand. New prices for these lenses are... I mean, you can a Player Series Strat for that kind of money. It's outside my costs-as-much-as-a-256GB-iPad (£429) rule.

South Bank Sunny Monday Autumn Morning

 

The title speaks for the photos. One day I will take black-and-white photos in the rain under a dark grey sky and then I will be a real photographer.

Southend Skies

 

The Met Office said it would be sunny with the odd cloud all day, but it turned out like this for most of the morning. However, the clouds and the light really was quite special. The pier is 1.3 miles long, and looking at a Maps App shows you to be in the middle of the Thames with no visible means of support. We walked out and took the rattly-clattery train back. Of course we did fish-and-chips on the seafront.

150 Piccadilly ... aka...

 

Once the temperature goes over 80F or so, I go into survival mode. I can't really think ahead too far. And when I do try to visit my osteo in Marylebone, the signals at Gunnersbury fail and we are all tipped out onto the Chiswick High Road. Gunnersbury is in the middle of transport nowhere. I re-scheduled and went home. This has nothing to do with the Ritz.

The One With People Coming Out Of A Shadow Under A Bridge

Another street photography favourite, although the pros might have taken it more squarely. I like the way all the lines don't quite line up. And the red bit.

C'est Manifique, Mais C'est N'est Pas Singapore

Politicians talking about "Singapore on Thames" again. It looks plausible...

until you go inland, and realise that far more of Singapore looks like a tourist postcard than scruddy old East London will ever do.

 

Greenland Dock

 

The station for Greenland Dock is Surrey Quays, but they don't signpost it at the station in case, you know, the wrong kind of people go there. It was one of the first Docklands developments, as the low-rise and human scale (as the architects say) of the buildings shows. It was the first of the London docks to be built (as opposed to riverside wharves) (more details here) and it's pretty darn large. The Royals are larger, but some of the Isle of Dogs docks are smaller. On a sunny day, it's a pleasant place to walk around, with houseboats...

and little feature places as well.

When you get to the Thames, turn right and start walking along the Thames Path towards London Bridge. It's a nice stroll.

Charlton House

 Most of it is open to the public, but sadly there's no historic furniture, art or decoration there. It's a ten-minute walk up the hill from Charlton station, and worth an amble around the park, a cup of coffee and slice of Victoria cake in the cafe. 

Bleak Mid-Winter Suburbia

It's not enough to get out for a daily walk. The walk needs to be pleasant, or at least neutral, to look at. Hedges on country lanes, with an occasional glimpse across a valley, or perhaps a path across a flat moor, or maybe even along a canal. Not round the outside of an industrial estate. But we make do and carry on.

 

One Wall of the Walled Garden, Golders Hill Park

 

Golders Hill Park is a couple of stops up the hill from the station. It's well worth the visit.

Mid-Morning November Fog in Richmond Park

This new lens is working out really well, as is the change of film simulation. But nothing beats some fog to smooth out the light and make mundane views look magical.

Highgate Road with Lens Flare

When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic. 

Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.

I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.

Hampstead Heath North Side

Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.

I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.

Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs

Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.

It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!). 

Autumn in Regent's Park

No further comment needed.

Canary Wharf - Security

I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.

He meant an entrance like this...

Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.

Canary Wharf Towers

I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it. 

The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.