Astbury's Adventures in Photography

What was once the Loch Long torpedo range can be found near Arrochar. The building has long since been abandoned and has suffered from a fire but some of it still remains. Sets of parallel rails that intersect with a simple turntable arrangement can still be seen, these were used for moving torpedoes around the test facility. These photographs have been shot with a Fuji X-T4, the raw files processed with COP and SilverEfex.   Parallel rails run across the floor Only a small part of the roof structure remains, what was the main building now completely open to the elements. All the window glass has been broken. View out to Loch Long The site is located at the southern end of Loch Long, a sea loch chosen for the very straight run it offers. Rail turntable Once the torpedoes were moved to the firing area they would be lowered on chains into the water and fired up the loch. An observation post was immediately above the firing area. Firing area Fired torpedoes would be recovered (althoug...

The traditional cyanotype process, now regarded as alternative processing, requires a UV source for curing (exposing) the prints. This post outlines the requirements for such a UV light source and some options to consider, along with the associated pros and cons, and then to look at one specific light source in more detail. Everbeam UV Flood light What is UV light Ultraviolet light, known simply as UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths 10–400 nanometres, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV is typically broken up into 3 bands: UVA - 400 to 320 nm UVB - 320 to 290 nm UVC - 290 to 200 nm UVA is the range for cyanotypes with 365nm usually considered a good mid-band wavelength that is effective for exposures (think of the numbers of days in the year and then the wavelength is easy to remember). Can I just use sunlight If you don't have a UV light source then sunlight is an option. The atmosphere blocks UVC and some UVB so the UV light from the sun...

I have recently purchased DXO NIK Collection 6 , here I'll give an outline of why I wanted this software and what my history of using the product is, along with some of the pros and cons as I now see them. Back in 2012 my then photography tutor recommended I look at Silver Efex as it was considered one of the best tools for processing digital images for black and white. At that time NIK sold the tools separately or, for the price of a couple of the tools, you could buy the set as a bundle which is what I did. I got on well with the tools and made extensive use of both Silver Efex and later Color Efex. Around 2014 I swapped computers and was unable to activate the NIK licenses on the new machine, I found Google had taken over the software and via their support team I was able to get an installable version. Subsequently I could reinstall that version as I changed computers a couple of times but when I started using Capture One Pro I intended to manage without it. DXO took over the N...

With my old laptop being 10 years old it felt overdue for replacement. It could not be upgraded to Windows 11, the battery charge would not last more than a few minutes and performance was generally slow so time to see what the latest tech could offer. Elimina Pro I was looking for something that would be good for photo editing along with a little video editing and maybe a little gaming. I would expect to mostly use the laptop plugged in to a power supply and not on the move so a larger high-res screen would be the preference. This in turn suggests a dedicated GPU which means ultra thin cases would not be an option. As off the shelf laptop configurations often have poor screens, are usually short on memory and short on storage space I was therefore looking for a custom build. As a company I've used before, PC Specialist came to mind. I based the build on one of their Elimina Pro laptops, choosing a 16 inch screen (diagonal measurement) as a good compromise size and opted for highe...

Following the proposed changes to the perpetual licenses for Capture One I've been starting to look at other options. Affinity Photo recently released a major update, Affinity Photo 2 , with a special promotion price so I had a closer look. Although I was aware Affinity have a good following I'd previously ruled it out as being an Apple only option, however it seems I was mistaken, this was only true in their very early days and their packages now come with Windows as an option.       For those that are familiar with Photoshop they will find that Affinity Photo works in a similar way. It is split into a few different modules, which they call personas, the main two being Photo (like Adobe's ACR) and Develop (along with personas for Liquify, Tone Mapping and Export). The RAW module has a good list of cameras supported and includes support for Fujifilm xtrans sensors. With Photo 2 they describe the RAW as non-destructive, in reality it was anyway, what they really mea...

The Raw Image Extension adds native viewing support for images captured in raw file formats and allows you to see thumbnails in Explorer without needing to open them with additional software.   RAW Image Extension from Microsoft This is very easy to setup and free, from Windows desktop run the Microsoft Store , go to Apps and search for "Raw Image Extension". Under "System requirements" it should state if your device is suitable for installation and if so then just install (needs to be Windows 11 or one of the more recent versions of Windows 10). NB Although this installs like an App it does not run as an App, it will run in the background, just use the Windows File Explorer to see thumbnails and view metadata. It uses the LibRAW Image Decoder, a list of supported cameras can be found here: https://www.libraw.org/supported-cameras