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Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:12 pm
by Frogwell
Utterly fed up with work on Friday I decided I needed to get out of the office. I didn't have enough time to do anything major, but at the same time I didn't just want to do a walk round the garden, so a quick flick through the weather sites and webcams later and I decided to head towards Glencoe, it's only an hour away so it would leave me time do amble about a bit before the sun packed in for the day. I printed off a few walks from here and downloaded a few gpx files. Arriving at Glencoe I picked the Pap of Glencoe as most of the sunshine seemed to be at that end.

That's the pre trip planning done, now onto the walk report ...

The Walk Report.
Well, basically, I walked to the top and then walked down again. I spoke to a nice Yorkshire couple for a while, took some photos, swore at my mobile phone (how dare it ring at me!), and ate three fake sausage rolls.

In place of anything interesting to write, here's a few snaps.

On the way up
Image

Near the top
Image

At the top
Image

Also at the top, but to the left a little bit
Image

On the way back down, it was greying up a bit although the dark clouds never came to anything
Image

On the way home, I just had to take a photo of a Peugeot 306
Image

That's about it really.

Oh, California Innovations backpack/water carrier thing - can't say I'm impressed. Too short on the back and the straps wouldn't stay tight

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:33 pm
by murphy999
Awesome photos Frogwell, the first one is one of my favourite views.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:17 pm
by pigeon
Some great photos there frogwell,not much snow left by the looks of it,going to head up there at weekend 8)

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:19 pm
by PauloUK77
You should enter the last picture in some competitions it has captured how moody the mountains can be perfectly.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:07 pm
by ChrisW
Beautiful photo's - :D

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:56 pm
by The Summiteer
Great photo's! What type of camera are you using? :?

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:06 pm
by Alastair S
Yes, a great set of piccies. I agree with PauloUK77, that last one is a real stunner.

Everyone else: take yourselves over to frogwell.com for a real treat. I've already bookmark the page.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:33 pm
by JTweedie
Those pictures are fantastic! :)

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:25 pm
by Frogwell
Thanks for all the comments :)


pigeon wrote:Some great photos there frogwell,not much snow left by the looks of it,going to head up there at weekend 8)

It's disappearing rapidly now. I had been hoping for a bit more on the higher peaks - it makes for better photos.

PauloUK77 wrote:You should enter the last picture in some competitions it has captured how moody the mountains can be perfectly.

Actually the scene was far more impressive than the picture shows. As I was driving South I just caught in my wing mirror the fantastic light beaming through the clouds creating a very warm, yet moody atmosphere. I had to wait another quarter of mile before I could pull into a layby, by which point the clouds were beginning to close the gap so I had no time to get the tripod out and just snapped a few pics handheld, but with a wider aperture than was necessary to get the full effect of the light. On the plus side it's made the picture sort of dirty (no, not that kind of dirty) and slightly noisy, which gives it a little atmosphere too.

The Summiteer wrote:Great photo's! What type of camera are you using? :?

A Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 18-70mm lense. I had a circular polariser and neutral density graduated filter on for all these pics too (as I do for most of my pics to be honest, it makes for lazy photography :) )

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:47 am
by Scott69
Some stunning photography,take a bow sir.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:34 am
by Derek T
Those are stunning photographs. But, can I ask, did the views actually look like that on the day or are we looking at the product of some very clever technology?

I've been up lots of hills and seen lots of views in different conditions but have never seen anything so sharp as these photographs. I'm not criticising here, I would just like to know what I am seeing :wink:

The main reason fr asking this question is that my very boring point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot A620 rarely captures a picture of a view that is better than what I was looking at with my own eyes. I would love to know where the optimum point is when considering a simple camera for someone who wants to point-and-shoot but also wants to capture the essence of what inspired them to take the picture.

Derek

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:18 am
by JTweedie
I'm not the OP who you directed your question to but my take is you can get great effects using SLR cameras with various filters attached to their lenses. Then of course you can use software like Photoshop to enhance your pictures.

I use Photoshop mainly for increasing contrast, changing brightness to compensate for any shortcomings in my own photography, but I never edit photos so much that they're far from what was taken.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:56 am
by Frogwell
Derek T. wrote:Those are stunning photographs. But, can I ask, did the views actually look like that on the day or are we looking at the product of some very clever technology?

I've been up lots of hills and seen lots of views in different conditions but have never seen anything so sharp as these photographs. I'm not criticising here, I would just like to know what I am seeing :wink:

The main reason fr asking this question is that my very boring point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot A620 rarely captures a picture of a view that is better than what I was looking at with my own eyes. I would love to know where the optimum point is when considering a simple camera for someone who wants to point-and-shoot but also wants to capture the essence of what inspired them to take the picture.

Derek

Hi Derek,

A valid question. As Jtweedie above writes, an SLR with filters is going to work wonders. I think you'd be struggling to get the quality and colour depth with a point and shoot. The biggest weapons in the arsenal are the filters. Using a decent circular polariser (I'd put emphasis on decent - I've tried the £20 ones and they just give photos a blue or yellow sheen) can completely transform a photo when used correctly in the right conditions. It won't work in every case (see the first picture above - notice the mountains in the distance are still washed out and the colour is dull). To enhance the the colour depth it has to be at the correct angle to the sun - the three pictures of Loch Leven I was pretty lucky as I was at almost 90 degrees, which is what you want. The other filter I routinely use is a neutral density graduated filter - this is basically transparent grey at the top fading to clear as it goes down. The benefit of this is that is stops the camera from washing out the sky as it tries to balance and brightness contrast between the sky and ground.

I also try and take landscape photos in as narrow an aperture as I can get away with to help keep as much of the picture in focus as possible. This requires a slower shutter speed, which of course can be problematic due to camera shake. I have a little camera mount on my walking pole to help with that and two of the pictures above I used a tiny little six inch tripod on top of a rock.

Then there is the format in which the camera records the photos - as default most camera will use jpg format and it will also try and work out colour balance and contrasts itself. Using this format is going to hobble you from the start as unless the camera got it perfect (which is rare) then you don't have the full colour and contrast information recorded, just what the camera thinks it should be. Saving the pictures in raw format is much better as it stores the full information. The downside is it takes about four or five times the space on the memory card. A good test, if your camera will allow, it to set your camera to take a copy on jpg format and raw format and then compare them on your computer - most cases the difference in quality is night and day.

Then there is photoshop - yup, I use it - although never to the point of making the photo unnatural or something it's not. Ninety percent of the work is done with the filters and decent camera, but even then most digital photos have a slight greyish, dull sheen over them which kills the natural contrast that your eyes can see. I'll use photoshop to bring these contrasts back and sharpen the colour. I try and keep this to a very minimum though (not least because I'm actually quite lazy and if it takes more than 15 seconds per photo then I don't bother) and I never use HDR software or the like that, while may be nice from an art point of view, are not really an accurate representation of actual scene.

That's it basically - good kit. I can't claim to have any great talent, at best I aspire to be average, but with a good camera, good glass and some decent filters I can normally just about keep my head above the point and shooters.

Oh yeah, one other thing - lots of waiting around for the weather to do just the right thing - the difference between a good and bad photo can be ten seconds. Take the second to last photo above, that streak of light across the hills only lasted thirty seconds or so, when it was gone the scene went back to being rather contrast-less.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:50 am
by Border Reiver
Nice pics. The view from the Pap is one of my favourites too. Last time I was up there, a couple of Hercules transport planes flew up the glen way below me and a bit later a couple of Tornadoes did the same - amazing flying. On the point of the pics, I use a point and shoot now, because the quality is good enough for me - 12mp + Leica lens and I can get it from my pocket in seconds, but when I'm looking at photos on here, I really don't care how the photograph has been created if I think Wow! what a great photo. If it's got the wow factor, who cares.

Re: Pap of Glencoe

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:09 pm
by blueyed
fantastic!