I recently visited Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on a short business trip. Living in Cyprus with no railways at all, I just had to make the time to explore Kuala Lumpur’s Light Rail Transit systems. Bear in mind as a dedicated gricer, the previous time I’d pointed a camera at a railway subject was in October 2010. Withdrawal symptoms? You bet!
During my visit, I managed to check out three of the systems: the Monorail, the Ampang Line and Electric Train Service.
Back in 1986 a business trip to Milan unusually featured a few hours of free time here and there - which was my first (and so far only) opportunity for a quick bit of gricing Italian style. The stuff I saw was a great mix of vintage and modern - scanning the original sides certainly makes me want to go back for a deeper investigation.
The CFD X2000 series were the first ‘modern’ railcars when they were delivered to Corsica in 1975. Whilst in many ways they were progress, in others they weren’t.
The Limassol Auto Club organised an Autosprint at Episkopi, Cyprus on 14 April 2013. The 1km course driven eight times attracted 45 entries comprising rally prepared cars. As a day’s entertainment it was terrific - a beautiful sunny day packed with full-on action motor sport and some great photographic opportunities.
The coastal plain around Mandria in Cyprus is intensively farmed as a series of small holdings. That leads to the village being almost a museum of interesting old tractors – many of which are still in daily use. Yesterday I found three interesting examples – a Serbian IMT 5539, a USA Massey Ferguson 165 and a Czechoslovakian Zetor 4011.
Recently I was contacted by Mike Richardson, a guy who served with the United Nations in Cyprus during and after invasion in 1974. Mike served in the village of Melandra, now one of the deserted villages of Cyprus. His story and pictures from the time are fascinating.
Early this summer, I bought a pocket sized Kodak PlaySport ZX5 video camera for a particular project I had in mind.
What a little gem it has turned out to be. It now goes with me everywhere, and here’s why.
Just had an interesting discussion with a mate. He'd got some great pictures of butterflies. Technically, they were spot on. But they didn't move me.
We debated the point, and his view was that what judges wanted, so that's what he'd give them.
Vibration Reduction (VR) is Nikon's solution to reducing camera shake when either using longer focal length lenses or slow shutter speeds. The Canon equivalent is Image Stabilisation (IS). In most situations, VR (or IS) is a very good thing.
The exception to this is when you're shooting with the camera mounted on a tripod. Then VR should be switched off.
