RossCumming

A few images from a recent trip to the west coast of Scotland, Wester Ross.

We had rented a 3-bedroom converted church in Inveralligin for the week. Inveralligin is very small village on the northern banks of Loch Torridon and is reached by driving along a single track road for around 7 miles from Torridon village. Torridon village itself was a 12 mile single track road drive from Kinlochewe so driving this everyday took a fair amount of time. You need patience driving these roads in the holiday season in Scotland.

For anyone who has been in this area, or knows this area, the dreaded Scottish midges were feasting on us! I still bear the scars! Even through midge nets and mosquito repellent!

We planned on doing as much walking as we could during the week and managed around 50Km's. Although I had wanted to climb Beinn Alligin, a bad walk on the second day left me with rather large blisters on my heels and effectively ended any chance of doing anything with a lot of ascent/descent. So we kept to lower levels.

I will try to post more over the next few weeks to my Flickr site for anyone that may be interested in seeing more of these images.

I used to do this sport many years ago and still enjoy watching it. Knowing the river intimitely and the paddlers helps get me into the prime locations on the bank where I know what the paddler is going to be doing. This shot works for me because i got myself into a position where the paddler looks as if she is making direct eye contact with me, however, truthfully, she is looking straight through the next slalom gate, which I am shooting through and purposefully cropped the gate poles out to give this close-up shot.

The shot was taken on the River Tay in a small town called Grandtully where many of the Scottish (and British) team paddlers train and race.

I have just purchased a TC17E II for use with my 70-200 f2.8 lens a few weeks ago. I was previously using a Sigma 100-300 f4 with Sigma x1.4 TC (both now for sale!).

Unfortunately, I have not yet tried the TC with my 70-200 lens! I really must try get out with it! If I do find the time to get out with it soon, i will post and let you know how it is.

I did try a friends TC20e III (on my 70-200 f2.8) and it seemed fine, but I wanted a slightly faster lens and having read up a lot decided to go with the TC17 as a compromise. I couldn't justify buying a new lens for the few occasions that I need the extra reach, much as I'd like to, so common sense (and bank manager) kicked in.

My partner uses a Kenko PRO300 1.4 TC with her Canon 70-200 f4 and it seems to produce reasonable results. She has a canon x2 TC but it does not autofocus with her f4 lens unless it is via live view (which does work remarkably well if a little slow). The Kenko also allows her to use it with her Tamron 150-600 lens, again using live view to autofocus. So I wouldn't rule out a Kenko TC.

I don't get to visit this site as often as I would like and I meant to post these images a few weeks back bit other things took over....

Anyway, just a couple of shots of Boudicca and Black Watch from a couple of the trips I sailed on them...

The first two of Boudicca are looking back over the sun deck leaving the port of Rosyth with the Forth Bridges in the back ground and docked in Aalborg in Denmark.

The shot of Black Watch was when we docked in Ísafjörður in the North West of Iceland.

I  have been fortunate to sail on Boudicca (around the Baltic Sea) and her sister-ship Black Watch (Iceland and Norway). Being older ships, they are nowhere like the modern goliaths (I have also sailed on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas in Alaska) in terms of luxury and on-board amenities, however, I have to say, I really enjoyed my times on both of Fred's ships. Being smaller, these two ships accommodate less than 1000 people on board so you tend to bump into the same people all the time and very quickly get to know other passengers. Seeing these images reminded me of the happy times of these holidays so thank-you for sharing.

Where in the UK are you Andy? In Scotland, I would recommend AJ Johnstone in Glasgow (http://www.ajjohnstone.co.uk/). I use them for sensor cleaning and they are an approved Canon / Nikon repair company (they can deal with warranty repairs etc.). Obviously there will be other companies perhaps closer to you than AJ Johnstone. You can, however, post your camera to them if you felt they were the right company to use - details of how to do this is on their web-page.

Ross

@nicole (and anyone else interested), I have added a few more to my Flickr site here https://www.flickr.c...s/7383374@N02/?

I still have more to go through at some point but not sure when I will get to them :-(

Thanks for the lovely comments.

Dogbytes, I am press-ganged into accepting Yorkshire as the most beautiful place in England due to my better half being a proud Yorkshire lass! But I will agree Cornwall is just as Beautiful! So here you go - a small sample from a trip to Cornwall from a 2 years ago to prove it is as beautiful as we describe it. You should hopefully recognise Clovelly (OK, thats Devon) and St Ives, but the beach scene I cannot recall exactly, maybe around St Agnes Heritage Coast area - happy if you can correct me!

Nicole, we did go to Beatrix Potters house, but it was very busy when we were there so did not go in - which is just as well as I am sure my partner would have spent a small fortune there. She too is a massive reader and fan. Where we live in Scotland, there is a Beatrix Potter exhibition about an hour away in a small town called Dunkeld where she wrote her picture letter to Noel Moore which was to become her first novel 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'.

So obviously we went to Wordsworth's house while we were there! I did take some record shots so I will look to process some of these and try post them for you. There were only small clumps of daffodils in the garden while we were there, but that was enough for my partner to be happy that she had been to Wordsworth's house and saw the daffodils in the garden.

I am still working my way through my photos from the Lakes and will post more, probably to my Flickr site

Sharing a few images from a recent trip to the Lake District in England, UK. For those who do not know the area, it is a mountainous area in the North West of England and is a popular holiday area for people interested in outdoor pursuits (hill walking, canoeing, boating etc.). It is also a very popular area for photography due to its natural beauty. It is a designated National Park and all the land area over 3000ft in England is only found within the park boundaries including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. I did set myself the target of climbing Scafell Pike, however, the weather was not on our side on this visit (a late snow fall!), so a good excuse to visit again in the future (this was my first time).

Coniston Water, one of the Lakes, was the location for various water-speed records by the Campbell family (Malcolm, then later his son Donald). Anyway, just a small sample of images....

I have been in Iceland several times and I carry a selection of sealable plastics bags to put lenses / bodies in while they are in my camera bag. I also add a few extra silica gel packs into my camera bag.

However, to be honest, both these measures are "just in case" measures and what I do tend to do mostly is that after I have been out in the cold and then go back indoors (vehicle / building / whatever), I simply do not open my camera back to let a sudden rush of warm air into the bag. I let my kit slowly acclimatize in the camera bag before pulling any of it out. If I need to recharge batteries, I will take these out before I go into the warmer room.

I bought my silica gel packs from Amazon at only a few pound / dollars.

What I do find I need in Iceland though, is a rain sleeve of sort sorts! If you are there for any length of time, it will most likely be wet at some point. I have two heavy duty rain sleeves which are a little bulky and not ideal for putting in my camera bag but I always carry an Op-Tech rain sleeve in my camera bag all the time (https://optechusa.com/rainsleeve.html) - well worth the money.

"Munro Bagging" is a pursuit unique to Scotland whereby people strive to climb all the mountains over 3000 feet in height (in Scotland).

There are 282 Munros with Ben Nevis being the highest.

People who climb these mountains often call it "Munro bagging" and are often referred to as "Munro Baggers", ie achieving (or "bagging") their target Munro.

Munros are named after Sir Hugh Munro who first produced the list of all  mountains in Sctoland over 3000 feet.

There are other height ranges, for example Corbetts or Marilyns - please feel free to google these if interested!

I have climbed about 30 or so of these Munros but don't specifically go out to solely climb Munros (or hills over 3000ft - there are some lovely hills not quite as high is this but are better walks).

Hope this helps!

Hi Georgina, you asked about online retailers in the UK - I would recommend you have a look at HDEWCameras (www.hdewcameras.co.uk). Before Brexit announcement and price hikes, they usually had very good prices but I am not sure how they compare now to UK stock. Still worth a look. The goods are imports (not UK stock) but they are already in the UK so not shipping from Far East so they will arrive within a few days and no risk of import tax. If you are based South East, you could pick up directly from their premises. They do provide their own 3 year warranty rather than the Nikon warranty and this may be a deal breaker for you, but for me, I have never had to return any of my Nikon equipment and the proce difference at the time for me was significant enough to take accept the risk - I have bought a few high value items from HDEW (bodies and lenses) with no issues.

Agree with all the comments above. Having travelled half way round the world to visit Hawai'i a couple of years ago, I took 10.5mm f2.8 Fish-eye, 17-55mm F2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8 lenses with me and my partner took her Canon 17-40mm f4 and 70-200mm f4 with x1.7 and x2 teleconverters and I can tell you all lenses and tele's were used.

Sure it was a pain carrying all this, but we're used to it and we would be kicking ourselves at missing shots because we didn't take all the kit we could have. We visited O'ahu and Big Island, both different in character and both different landscapes so having a range of focal lengths gave us the flexibility we needed to take the huge beach vistas on O'ahu to the milkyway shots on Mauna Kea and lava flow shots from a helicopter.

One thing I could recommend though, is to have a look at O'ahu Photography Tours if you are on O'ahu (based in Honolulu). We did two tours with them in one day - a sunsrise tour and the full moon tour (lucky to be there at the right time for this) and spent the middle time in Honolulu doing the usual tourist shots of Waikiki etc. Both tours were very good. From memory, our guide was a Nikon shooter and had kit with him that he was happy for people to borrow if they didn't have a lens suitable.

Which island(s) are you visiting? Each islands is very different so this may help you choose.

OK, so I was actually able to get out this past week and take photos and process them all in the same week! Here a few from the weekend trip....

Rannoch Moor Sunburst. I was very lucky with this one. I had been driving along the road and across the small bridge that can been in the photo and the light bursting out from behind the hills was incredible. I knew I could not stop the car where I was but was also aware there was an area about 1 mile up the road so I raced along to that in the hope the light was still god, which it was, although it was not as good as it was minutes earlier.

The Black Cuillin Hills. These hills are often photographed from this spot (a tiny village called Elgol on the Isle of Skye) with many a professional photographer having at least one of these shots on their portfolio. I was not there at the right time of the day and the light was not great, however, the sun did break through and cast some light onto some of the hills allowing me to capture this (and a few others).

Applecross Bay Beach. Applecross is another tiny village nestled away on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands with an incredible drive in over what is known as the Applecross pass which is reminiscent of an alpine road with switchback corners only this road is single track for 25 miles or so! I liked the loneliness of the two people onto beach and dark brooding skies over the mountains in the distance (the Red Cuillin on the Isle of Skye).

Hope you enjoy these.

Thank-you very much for all the comments. The backup completed Thursday afternoon so from Monday afternoon until Thursday afternoon!

I originally started to use Apple Time Machine via Wi-Fi and then cable but changed to WD's own sync utility ("WD Sync") and left it at that. It looks like it is a copy of the hard-drive and the files are accessible as if they are on the hard-drive.

When I changed to cable, I disabled Wi-Fi on the iMAC so I know it was connected via cable only. I think I may purchase a Gigabit switch in the future (Netgear have one that is quite affordable).

Now the first sync has been completed, it will be interesting to see how the next one goes........

I am hoping it will be quicker and will be an incremental sync with only additions / deletions performed. Not sure when I will try this but it should be relatively soon. The end result is the data is now backed up so I am a lot more relaxed now :-)

Again, thanks for all the comments, pointers and suggestions; it is very helpful. Once I have it sorted such that I can access it remotely from my laptop I will probably get some of the IT boffins I work with to have a look it from my laptop and advise.

Ross