Lenses, Fish, Jazz

Those are three of the keywords that I would use if I had to tag my weekend.

I went to London Aquarium on Saturday with Andreas, with the intentions of: (a) seeing some aquatic life and (b) taking some photographs of it.

I was fairly successful, despite (with hindsight predictable) huge midday Saturday crowds obscuring the tanks.

Andreas brought his impressive assortment of lenses, most of which I tried on my camera. It made a huge difference. The main advantage being the availablility of f/2.8 aperture. My 17-85mm lens only goes to f/4 or f/5.6 at its full 85mm focal length.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with camera jargon, a smaller f ratio means that the hole that the light comes through is bigger relative to the length of the lens – i.e. more light gets in. This means you can use a faster shutter speed and/or a lower ISO (sensitivity) setting. All of which results in less blurry / less grainy images.

The image above is my best one of the day so far. There are more that still need processing (from RAW files). See my aquarium set on Flickr (unfinished at time of writing).

The rest of the weekend was cool. On Saturday night I went to my mate Sam’s night It’s Bigger Than. It was their (2nd?) birthday party and Tom Middleton did a guest DJ set. He did a good job – I’ve never seen such a DJ get so enthusiastic before! Erm, actually I once saw Mark E.G. dancing behind the decks clenching a 12” record in his mouth. But that was more insanity than enthusiasm. But anyway – Tom Middleton - he’s probably my favourite all-round DJ. I actually met him about five years when I did the DJ slot just before him in a bar in Leeds. Very nice chap, not to mention a musical hero of mine!

On Sunday, The Eyechild and I met up with the Camberwell Flickr Group, in a bar in Camberwell. They were a really nice bunch. We sat in a bar, supped Guiness and generally waxed Camberwell lyrical. As I’ve moved to Clapham, I felt a bit like a deserter though! My excuse was that I still go there all the time (which is true).

Sunday was also my brother’s birthday. After the Flickr meet-up Tom (Eyechild), Dunc and I went up to visit him in Wood Green where we grabbed some food then went to a pub in Southgate where there was a jazz jam on. He got up and played on a couple of tracks. Photos from that to follow...