I’ve been looking at loads of pictures on flickr, and there are some stupidly amazing shots. However to get that extra edge a lot oh photographers use a technique called HDR, or High dynamic range imaging. I’ve been itching to have a play, but also watched to play with panoramic stitching.

So before I set off on the trip to work tonight, I quickly nipped pass Southend Seafront, and took a few snaps.

So first I played with the stitching together, it wasn’t as straight forward as the tutorials had made out, the main difficulty I had was filling in the sky. Got over that and this is what I came up with

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I really want to get a fish-eye, a wide angle and a macro lens for my D60, but each of these are quite expensive, especially for what should have been a small hobby. (Famous last words). So I was looking on eBay (my favourite night shift pass time) and saw this;

I was dubious, as to whether or not it would produce any quality pictures, due to the relativly cheap price. Alas I clicked the buy button anyways.

I was pleasntly supprised on how much fun it is. It screws onto my 52mm lens, via an adapter, and you then use all the functions on the camera, i.e. focus, shutter, aperature..etc

It’s a bit of a jack of all trades, but doesn’t do it half bad. To use the macro feature, you unscrew the main lens, which can be a bit fiddily vs swapping the Nikon lens. Then to use the ‘fish-eye’ setting you have your lens on the closest mm, and then to use the wide angle you slightly zoom out, to use the whole iris.

As I say, of course it doesn’t perform as well as each of the single lens would, but for £35, you can’t really complain.

Below are a few shots I took over the weekend, using it in ‘fish-eye’ mode. Even though it doesn’t really distort the edges like the pro lens would, I think the photo’s still have a ‘fun’ effect.

I’d recommend the lens for anyone wanting to take some fun shots. It’ll never deliver the high quality macro, wide angled, or fish-eye pictures, but you can still have a lot of fun with it.

“Another new toy” album, has a few more from the weekend.

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Have been playing with my D60 quite a lot recently, whilst it’s one of the more beginner dSLRs on the market, it still is a lot of fun. Trying to work out what settings will be the best for each shot, and not cheat with the auto mode.

Bought a new lense, a 55-200mm the other day, which is pretty cool for all those zoomed shots. Would really like a 10-22mm or a fisheye lens, but they’re quite a bit out of my hobby budget at the moment. Also bought a Jessops speedlight. I did want to get a SB-600, but again slightly pricy. I went for the 360AFD, which seems to have a bucket load of features to get me started. I especially like the automatic slave mode.

Went for a midnight drive around the embankment in London last night, a few snaps are below. Was playing with longer shutter speeds, until my tripod fell apart. Am going to read up on HDR processing later, as have seen some amazing photos.

Still a very much work in progress, still lots of fun. More can be seen on my flickr page, or my blog gallery (links from flickr)

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I’d read lots of reviews, and actually thought about buying it, rather than on a whim, which is usually the route I would take. Managed to get a reasonably good deal, and so far been having quiet a lot of fun reading up on the world photography. I went for the D60, as it has many of the features seen on the more expensive DSLR, but aimed at the entry level photographer, me.

I’ve taken a few pics, and will eventually upload to flickr, just take even longer now, as they’re much high res, and my home upload speed is terrible at best. Also need to master some photo editing wares, not sure what one I prefer yet.

I was however interested to see, how my new shiny camera would compare to my compact. Whilst I was out strolling around the other day, I took the same picture of the coast, with the two cameras.

Nikon D60:

Olympus FE330:

The thumbnails can be quite deciving, but the bigger photo’s on flickr reveal all. Both pictures were taken at the same point, faceing roughly the same point, and using the fully auto function on both.

I also had my iPhone and TyTN on me, so thought I’d take a photo with those too.

Apple iPhone:

HTC TyTN:

Surprisingly here, the iPhone, with it’s lower Mega Pixel lens, actually took a better photo. The colours on the TyTN were terrible. Out of all four, the D60 showed the closest match, the other three, make the day look quite dark, where it was actually quite a light day.

I need to see if I can get my iPhone to properly GPS log, have been using instamapper, but can’t seem to get HoulahGeo to geotag the photos using the files, but once that’s all working, will be able to geotag the photos too, which will be rather useful Then a few more lens, filters… oh dear this could all be expensive, very expensive.

No doubt I’ll snap some more in the coming future. Below are a few of snaps from the “Playing with my D60″ album, from when I’d just got the camera out the box:

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