January 23rd – Tuesday. The cold is easing but my average speed is still lamentable. I’m feeling better, but still not well and the weather is… Challenging.
Returning from Birmingham in the 5pm dusk, at least New Street Station gave me some welcome late night feelings.
I’m improving. But a return to health and optimism can’t come soon enough.
December 19th – I came back through Walsall Wood and up over Castlefort as I had to nip into Stonnall. I’ve been using the TZ100 all week. After trying some night shots from Hollanders Brindge in Walsall Wood, I’ve decided – I prefer the Canon.
This is momentous. I’ve used Panasonic cameras mostly for 10 years. But the TZ100? It takes good pictures. It’s low light performance is good. It’s not a bad camera. But it’s too like the TZ90 in user interface and features, and it’s lagging the G7X in usability, and I think, just a little in picture quality too.
Whatever succeeds the TZ100 needs to plough a different enough furrow to make it feel better. It doesn’t, particularly.
January 16th – A shot I was keen to try with the TZ 100 has been the M6 Toll bridge at Anglesey wharf. I don’t think it was dark enough. It was certainly struggling with the balance between sky and the sodium-lit under bridge.
It’s not a bad image, but bizarrely, I think the TZ90 did it way better.
January 16th A second day off sick. My congestion was better, and my strength a little greater but I have a cough and a chest thing that tightens like a bear-hug on my chest when I undertake even lightly arduous tasks.
I can honestly say this is the illest I’ve felt, possibly since the food poisoning in 2011. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.
Again, slipping out at dusk, I pushed for Chasewater. It hurt. It was bitterly cold, or at least, seemed it. But I still have a camera to test and new images to find in a limited range for now.
Hammerwich looked good, in the gloom.
January 14th – Still awful, but hoping to be better for work next day, I pushed myself up the canal to Chasewater to try out the TZ100 instead of the Canon I’m getting very accustomed to.
Coming back to the quirkiness of a Panasonic after the Canon was a shock, but as I’ve been suspecting, it’s the sensor size that’s making the difference. Although structured for different styles and uses, the two cameras seem to be equally good in low light – streets ahed of the TZ90 – but the Panasonic, like the Canon, will benefit from playing with.
The ride wore me out, and it was bitingly cold. I got in, and collapsed into bed.
January 13th – The cold had really got me. I was damned ill with no energy at all. I slipped out after dark for a short loop of the canal, then came home, shivering and exhausted.
I was pleased with the shots, though, although there weren’t many on this torpid, tortured evening. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
January 12th – I came from Derby to Leicester, made a call in Leicester, back to Birmingham and then Walsall. At 4:30pm I was in Derby; by 6:30 I was in Walsall. Not bad, really.
Through my increasing aches and congestion – the cold was really clouding things now – I got the Late Night Feelings vibe in several places, and a bit of a Peter Saville in Walsall.
I love travelling. I love riding a bike. I don’t love the cold virus.
I was glad to get home.
January 10th – Sorry, more night shots. You must be sick to the back teeth of them, but I’m finding new low-light vistas opening up and it’s really turning my gears at the moment.
I crossed North Street, the umbilicus between Birchills and The Butts in Walsall, and stopped even though it was misty and cold, just to take a shot at the view from the railway bridge toward the town centre.
This view is one of those that’s always much more impressive as a whole than one is able to capture in a photo, as it’s so wide. But tonight, I liked the light on the snaking rails, the lights from the collage and WHG HQ and the rising plumes of steam from the boiler flues.
I’d have played some more, but it was cold, and I was hungry. Som many things to try with this one. I’m dying to see what it does with a station at night.
January 8th – Again, handheld shots. This camera is amazing for this – and I’m noticing the daylight shots are pretty good too. Sorry, I’ll stop prattling about cameras soon, I promise. but it’s a long time since a piece of tech has had this much of an impact on me.
It was an absolutely evil commute home – the suck this season seems to be still petering out and there was some absolutely awful driving going on, and a constant drizzly mist that I believe it’s fashionable to call ‘mizzle’. It searched out every not quite done up zip and pocket. I was soaked, cold and unhappy.
As I came through Walsall Wood the lights and mist interacting with each other fascinated me. I’m not a huge fan of the Walsall Wood pithead sculpture, as is fairly well known, but in the mist and football training floodlights, it looked eerily impressive this evening.
As to the footballers, their dedication was impressive. It must have been horrid out in shorts.
January 7th – In order to reclaim something from the ride, I headed via Whittington to Lichfield, for if there’s one place that makes for good night photos, it’s Lichvegas.
Once again, the Canon gave a good account, and I’m loving this camera as a low light device: These images are handheld despite some seriously odd quirks in the hardware ergonomics – why on earth would you have an exposure compensation control on the same central axis as the mode dial, committed in hardware? Often you unintentionally skew exposure compensation changing mode by accident – an awful bit of design.
The camera has a very yellow response to even high pressure sodium lights, which is interesting, but it works remarkably well under white LED street lighting and T5 fluorescents.
Whittington Church is hard to get a good angle on, and that subway in Festival Gardens, Lichfield, fascinates me. I wonder how old it is? It’s construction would suggest 1920s or 30s.
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