Astbury's Adventures in Photography

Seeing some recent hedgehog activity prompted me to setup an old trail cam that had not been used in sometime. The resulting footage from the old trail cam could have been better quality and so this prompted the purchase of a new trail cam, the Browning Recon Force Edge . Here I'll outline the issues with the old trail cam, the factors in the selection of the new one and how it has performed so far. Still from Browning video - Hedgehog Back in 2018 I reviewed my new Victure HC200 trail cam , a no-glow IR unit that I would describe as cheap and cheerful ( still available, the current variant is now about £60 ). It did the job in detecting what was moving about but it was awkward to setup, image quality was poor and USB file transfers were painfully slow. With these factors in mind I looked for a new trail cam that might deliver better image quality and generally be better all round. It didn't seem to make much sense to pay for a 4k camera when it would mostly be shooting in the ...

I've recently had a new Fujifilm X-T4 camera, acquired as the silver body-only option. Having previously had the X-T1 this post is to evaluate what I liked about the original X-T1, the reasons for buying again with the newer X-T4 and to outline some of the steps involved in making the transition. The X-T1 design is about 6 years old, I've had mine for about 5 years, quite a long time in the life of a digital camera. In this time it has been fault free, had several firmware updates and continues to deliver good photographs. The retro styling may not be to everyone's taste but I like it and more importantly it gives simple quick access to the main controls (ISO/shutter/aperture/exp comp) without resort to menus. The camera is relatively small and light, ideal when I don't want the size and weight of a full frame DSLR, for example when out walking. At 16mp the resolution has been enough to produce a large print if the image is not cropped too much. Jpegs are usually very g...

I've recently purchased the Fujinon XF70-300mm F4-5.6 R LM OIS WR zoom lens. For those unfamiliar with all the letters in the full lens designation, R indicates that it has a ring for controlling aperture (can also be set to auto), LM denotes a linear motor for autofocus, OIS denotes optical image stabilisation and WR denotes weather resistant (but not fully water proof). Fujinon 70-300mm lens on X-T1 In choosing this lens I was looking for something that I could use as a flexible telephoto lens for capturing images of wildlife such as birds. I have Canon's 70-200 L series lens but this does not give enough reach, if I pair it up with a X2 extender there is a distinct loss in image quality and going up to the Canon 100-400mm lens would mean lots of expense and lots of weight lugging it around. By choosing a Fuji X mount lens this means having an APS-C sensor, so effectively multiplying the full-frame focal length equivalence (70-300 gives 107-457mm in 35mm format equivalent), w...

I've already spent some time investigating Lightroom alternatives and identified Capture One as looking likely but you can only get so far with reading reviews and looking at tutorial videos so it was time for me to get hands on with Capture One Pro. My intention is to put Capture One through it's paces for those aspects that matter to me but not to run through every single function or option and not to compare with Lightroom at a pixel by pixel level. I started out simply by going onto the Phase One site, entering a few basic details and then being emailed a download link. Capture One About Once installed I fired it up and created a new empty catalog (tip: I located this on my SSD drive to improve performance). Tip: once installed this is a good moment to review and edit preferences, you'll want to check the "Preview Image Size", it defaults to 2560 pixels, set lower if your screen resolution is lower to avoid having unnecessarily large preview files (NB...

The most recent addition to my camera armoury is the Victure HC200 Trail Camera, at a special offer price of just £39 this seemed well worth trying. Victure HC200 Trail Cam What you get is a robust unit with waterproof IP66 camouflage effect finish. It can shoot stills as 12mp jpeg and shoots video at 1080HD (in AVI format). It has a PIR type movement sensor that triggers recording and can record at night using it's own inbuilt infrared lighting. Side opening clips with lock option Inside the display and control panel Battery compartment, takes up to 8 AA cells The instructions are not particularly clear but the camera operation is reasonably straightforward. First up is battery installation, it swallows 8 regular AA cells. It also needs a memory card and takes standard (UHS-I) SD cards up to 32Gb capacity, which can easily be formatted from the setup menu. There are various configuration options; shoot stills and/or video, shoot one still at max res or ...