Family shots - Samsung NX300

I bought a little Samsung NX300 to go to the Lebanon with in January, having left my Canon and kit at home.  I am really enjoying using it.  It has all sorts of clever features which I am only just starting to understand.  So far it has produced some great results.  I bought it because it has a full manual mode and a fairly fast lense.  I'm enjoying the other gizmo's.  One touch on the back of the screen gives auto focus, exposure control and shutter release.  A couple of more touches and photo's can be uploaded to the internet, so long as there is a wireless connection.  Good lenses too.  Just bought a converter (about £12) online which will enable me to use my old FD lenses too.  May buy a converter for my EOS Lenses - let's see how we get on with the FD series for a start.

I like these family snaps - my boy and youngest walking the final mile home after a good leg stretch with the dog.  And below - getting ready for a portrait shot with the children and Pippa.  We never did get a good portrait!  The Samsung can shoot multiple shots in very quick succession - faster than my 5DII for sure.  It can be fun just shooting a blurr of photographs and seeing later what has been captured.  I like this:

Morning Sky in East Anglian

I arrived home last week from my most recent stint in Dubai.  I wanted to capture the feel of the skies here, so different from the almost constant blues over the UAE.  I took Pippa out for an early morning walk and was really looking to photograph the fields.  I had my Canon, a new wider angle zoom and my tripod.  This photo' was almost a chance shot, in that I had finished looking east over the fields towards sunrise, and was just sorting my gear out.  I brought the dog in and made her sit in front of the camera and this was the result. 

The tripod enabled a slower shutter speed and so a deeper depth of focus.  I ran this through Lightroom for some post processing and upped the colour and clarity a little, lightening the foreground and darkening the skies with separate graduated filters.  I also lightened and sharpened the dog a little.  This photo drew some really positive comments on FB so I thought I would drop it up here.  Arguably it is over processed, with a close to HDR feel, although it is one shot and not a combination of exposures so not an HDR photo. 

This and a few other photographs I have taken are close to accurate representations of what I was seeing, although clearly 'sparked up' a bit with post processing.  What it gives is not so much a 100% accurate representation of what I saw, but a 100% accurate representation of how what I saw made me feel.