The Churchyard Gates

St Martin's church's gates and this shot was a more a testament to a very old lens that, prior to Blip, almost never saw the light of day - my Nikon-N Nippon Kogaku 35mm f1.4, which has a brass body and scalloped metal outer focus ring. It cost me a 'crippling' £99 secondhand from London Camera Exchange in the early 1980's and was the third lens I ever bought and the only one of that trio I still have, let alone can still use.

Handheld, at max aperture and lit by just one nearby street-lamp isn't the ideal scenario for a perfect architectural pattern photo. Perfect it ain't, but it's not bad either.

Quick conversion to mono, with some sliding the red and yellow sliders (the only two colours in it - red generally alters the density/brightness whilst the yellow the rest. Some extra sharpness to get those lines a bit clearer and that's about it.

Have the Winter Solstice on this coming Friday sunrise at Stonehenge and I've always gone up with my good friend Hadrian, who isn't a snapper and for my liking always wants to escape the cold weirdness of it all rather too quickly, but being car-less, I have little option. Always tricky to know which lenses to go for but the people attending is one aspect I want to do more of this time and this past year I've added the Nikkor G 85mm f1.8 to my arsenal. In my opinion, you don't want to be waving a massive 70-200mm f2.8 all morning, too slow, (a lot is near darkness) far too big (it gets very cramped within the inner circle of stones) and show-offy and intrusive. On my D7000 it becomes a handy 127mm f1.8