Thank you to all our clients for your business in 2010 — we hope you have a prosperous and successful 2011, and look forward to serving you again.
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Thinking about buying a new digital camera? The best advice I can give you is to avoid maxing out megapixels and you’ll get sharper photographs with less grain (noise). This seems counter-intuitive, but is the effect of camera technology running into physical limitations of lenses and light itself.
David Goldstein has written a full-length paper that explains the physics, but here are the key take-aways on megapixels:
- For a full-frame (35mm) SLR camera, 25 megapixels is about as good as it gets.
- For a smaller “APS” digital SLR camera, about 20% smaller than 35mm, 10 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, and 15 megapixels is on the edge (and has noticeably more noise)
- For a pocket camera where the sensor is about 1/5th the size of 35mm, 4-5 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, 10 megapixels is pushing it even at very wide apertures, and 12 megapixel or greater pocket cameras will take disappointingly fuzzy pictures at aperture f/2.8 or greater.
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 Call home to tell your friends and family about Italian gelato (ice cream) Phoning home from Italy, France, the UK or indeed anywhere else in Europe is easy since all countries in the European Union agreed on one standard way of making international calls. You dial two zeros (00), the country code, and then the number. The country code for the US is 1, so a call to the San Francisco number 415-555-1212 is dialed 00-1-415-555-1212.
Dialing works the same way on mobile phones, or you can use the shorthand of “+” instead of the two zeros. The benefit of this approach is that this works anywhere on any mobile phone network world-wide, not just in Europe — which is handy for numbers you put into the phone’s memory or contact list. In my example, you’d dial +1-415-555-1212, and this same number would work when dialed in the US as well as in Europe.
On regular land-line phones, you can speed up the connection by dialing a # at the end of the number (more precisely, this cuts short the “post dial delay”). This tells the phone network that you are done dialing your international number, and it starts connecting the call immediately. Otherwise, the phone network will sit and wait in case you want to dial any more digits — several seconds — because unlike domestic calls, the network doesn’t know the exact length of phone numbers for every area of every country. This isn’t required with mobile phones because you hit the “send” or “call” button at the end of the number.
One more thing about the ‘# at the end trick’: it works in the US too when dialing internationally. Try it and see!
Want to learn more about calling from Europe? See Using cell phones in Europe part 1, and using mobile data services (part 2)
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Posted in cell phones, europe, france, italy, london, travel
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Tagged calling, cell phones, europe, france, french, italy, phones, travel, vacation
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It is far harder to travel with photo gear than it used to be. Airport security is becoming more and more restrictive. US airport security now has a ban on carrying rechargeable batteries without a container: they must be in a case and not loose in your bag. Multiply this with airport security staff of little understanding and the full authority of Homeland Security, and life can be difficult.
 Flying butresses, not flying problems (Notre Dame de Paris) Continue reading →
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Eagle (Aquilla) contrade members and their shadows, Siena, Tuscany
You might be forgiven for wondering what is going on in this photograph. It is a vertical view down onto the heads of a bunch of grown men in medieval yellow silk outfits waving large flags. You can only tell they’re men and flags by the shadows, which is part of the appeal in this photograph. But what on earth is going on? Continue reading →
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Posted in europe, history, italy, photography, story behind the picture, travel, tuscany
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Tagged contrade, eagle, italy, pageantry, siena, travel, tuscany
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Photographing fireworks can be straightforward if you follow a few basic steps:
1) You need a camera where you can control the shutter speed. Digital SLR owners will be fine — use manual or Shutter Priority modes, but also more and more ”point and shoot” cameras now offer this kind of control. Very slow shutter speeds work the best because they offer the biggest chance of the shutter being open when the fireworks explode.
2) No flash required! Turn off any automatic flash or select a mode where the flash won’t pop up.
3) Find a good spot for composition where you can set up a tripod or put the camera on a stable surface. This photo was taken with the camera sitting on a concrete parapet. Ideally, have something in the composition that you can use for focus lock and metering. In the photo, the focus point and metering was taken from the bridge.
4) Avoid camera shake from pushing the shutter release. If you have a remote release cable, use it. If not, make do by using the automatic timer (designed for self-portraits) — push the release and then step away from the camera so it is completely stable when the timer expires and the shutter opens.
5) Select the lowest ISO you have on your camera. You want a long exposure, and at night low ISO means the shutter has to be open at least a second or two to collect enough light from the scene. Because the shutter will be open for a long time, the camera will be susceptible to noise. This means light noise (unwanted light from street lights, headlight reflections etc) and thermal noise (heat in the sensor that causes a film grain effect). The fireworks will be relatively bright, and so although they are short in duration they will be visible in the photo. This photo was taken at ISO 100.
6) Unless you are shooting directly up into the sky with no background, meter the scene where you’ll take the photograph to set exposure. This goes back to composition — choose a spot where you have something else for focus and to take a light reading. You can set focus and exposure, then move the camera to the final position for the shot — this is what I did with the bridge in the photo. If in doubt, err on the side of over-exposure. With so little light in the scene it is unlikely to be catastrophic. Take a few test shots before the fireworks start to check exposure.
7) Once the firworks start, take lots and lots of photos! You never know what you will catch. Keep on clicking! If you have time, use image review to check shutter duration. If you see “streaky” fireworks, consider shortening the exposure (you can use Shutter Priority mode to ensure you get the same exposure at a faster shutter speed), or dial up the ISO.
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This photo recently featured as the travel section lead in Links Best Of Golf magazine, and was taken from a ruined monastery on the edge of Volterra, Tuscany. The town itself is at the top of a rocky outcrop west of San Gimignano, and the north-western side has been eroding for hundreds of years. Many buildings are already at the base of the cliffs, and this Pisan-style monastery was abandoned years ago. It was late in the day, and as the sun set from the West it lit up the rolling Tuscan plain, framed by the old stone window.
 View west across the Tuscan plain from a ruined monastery at the edge of the cliffs ("balze") in Volterra, Italy. Related Posts:
Posted in europe, italy, photography, story behind the picture, travel, tuscany
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Tagged architecture, europe, italy, photography, travel, tuscany
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Links Best Of Golf magazine features a Lodge Photo image to head up its travel section in the Summer 2010 issue (page 65):
 View across the Tuscan plain from Volterra Related Posts:
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Tagged europe, front cover, italy, photography, travel, tuscany, vacation
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If you stand at night on the Northern edge of San Francisco, just along from the Bay Bridge on the Embarcadero, and look towards the island that anchors one end of the suspension bridge, you will see a flicker of tiny flashes of light by the water line. This is not some strange atmospheric phenomena, but camera flashes from visitors taking pictures of the San Francisco skyline at night. The sad part about this is that it can be seen pretty much every night and all of those pictures are not going to come out as expected — but it does illustrate the trouble many have with controlling camera flash.
At the other extreme, there are those who have sworn never to use flash, ever. While I don’t agree with that, you can take a first step to improving the quality of photos taken with a compact camera by turning off the flash function. If you don’t know how to do it (and boy, do some manufacturers make it hard to figure out) then now is the time to look up flash in the manual and start reading.
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(c) Copyright 2006-2010 Mathew Lodge / www.lodgephoto.com. Updated March 2010.
Temple Church is a remarkable building because it has survived intact in pretty much its original form in the centre of a major city for 800 years, and because it has been the scene of key events in British history. Its role in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and subsequent surge of popularity is merely the most recent chapter in a long and distinguished history.
Temple Church has survived the crushing of the Knights Templar by the Pope in 1307, the disbanding of the Knights Hospitallier (its subsequent owners) by Henry VIII during the reformation of 1540, the Great Fire Of London in 1666, unwarranted “restoration” by the architect Sir Christopher Wren in the aftermath of the fire, Victorian remodeling in 1841, and a 1941 incendiary bomb attack during World War II. It is one of the oldest buildings in London (only Westminster Abbey and the White Tower at the Tower Of London are older), and is one of the few remaining examples of Romanesque architecture left in the city.
The building’s architecture is the most striking feature when you first approach the church, which is found by navigating a series of narrow alleyways between Fleet Street and the Embankment alongside the river Thames. Suddenly, you find yourself in an open square right next to a round crenelated building of honey-colored sandstone, attached to a larger rectangular structure.
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Posted in da vinci code, economics, europe, history, london, travel
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Tagged church, da vinci code, dan brown, europe, guide, history, london, templar, temple
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Exterior of Temple Church, London