Today was a day of getting back to photography, for photography. I was armed with my Nikon ZF and Viltrox Z20mm F/2.8, along with my Z24-70mm, a tripod, ND filters and patience. For the images taken at Mumbles, I used a tripod, and every image was focus stacked, every image thought about and considered... Even in the rain.
For the stroll around Swansea Marina, I left the tripod in the car as it was a slightly different kind of photography. Because of the amount of times I have been in the area, all shots were taken with intent. Not just the intent of the composition, but also the intent of the colour profile that I used.
Today I used three different colour profile recipes which I have not used for serious work before. All are based on Nikon colours, as opposed to trying to get Fuji, Leica or some old film. I think they worked well, in fact, so well that I did not even use the raw files! Images were stacked in Luminar Neo, however, no editing was performed on any image other than cropping.
These images below are the Mumbles Pier images: As mentioned, all images featuring the pier or lifeboat house were shot on a tripod and focus stacked from 2-3 images. For these I used my Premium Vivid Punch which used all Nikons colour palette with only minor tweaks to brightness of colours and a slight tweak in hue to the blues and greens.
These images below are from Swansea Marina area: These were shot in three different colour profile recipes. The first half is Premium Vivid Punch, then you have the Premium Monochrome which is a high contrast black and white recipe followed by Premium Nostalgic, which is based on my MGA Nostalgic recipe, but focused more on Nikon colours.
I mentioned the lenses I had with me at the beginning of this blog, however I only ended up using the Z20mm lens. As I have my ZF set up a certain way, when I use a function button, it throws me into DX mode (apsc crop mode). This essentially means that I have (on this occasion), a 20mm and a 30mm lens in one when I access that mode. Yes, it basically crops in camera, but it is extremely useful and I use it all the time with the Nikon ZF.
I am starting to sound like an advocate for jpeg shooting, but honestly, I shoot in both raw and jpeg and use whichever files I think work best. Getting it right in camera saves so much time and energy. I am a photographer first, and the least I can edit, the better.
It was a fantastic 4 hours out, and doing pure photography makes all the difference, away from the groups, away from the distractions and just doing what I love best. I hope you enjoyed this, and I look forward to hearing from you all on what you think of the images etc.
One Camera One Lens Photography 
Hey Mark, I love the look of wide-angles, so these are right up my alley. The shots of the pier are fantastic – you could probably mine those for months and still keep finding interesting details, both above and below. The big colourful building is great too, and that log in front of it on one of the shots almost feels alive. A beautiful series, and you can tell it was made with real enjoyment. Have a great day !
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Thank you Marc. It was nice to get out and slow down. I haven’t used a tripod in a long time, and I knew that this would slow me down and allow different techniques.
I also used the camera in its 96mp mode, which was interesting! I think if it hadn’t been so windy I could have used the images, but because it takes 32 images and then combines them, the wind caused too much shake or there was too much moving in the scene!
As always, thanks again Marc.
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