GrumpyDaddy

This is my favourite photograph I've taken for quite a while. It's a pretty simple affair, my daughter Kitty catching the breeze on the jetty at West Bay in Dorset.

I just thought I'd share with you a few snaps I took last week when we were on holiday in Croyde, North Devon.

Sorry you had to put up with all that guff about selling my Canon gear. It was clearly madness, one invests in lenses, and I have two f2.8 I love and would be bonkers to sell.

Anyway I solved the whole "small camera to carry around when with the family - but with enough control to appeal to the nerdy photographer" (very long-winded) dilemma.

The answer was a Canon S95 thanks to some money that fell into my lap. A compact for folks who like to dabble with SLRs. I promise to shut up about cameras now.

In this post a few weeks ago I talked about possibly selling my Canon photo gear and moving over to Sony.

The reason was the newly announced A55 camera which really looked like a technology I wanted to invest in - especially given my eyesight problems. The only thing nagging me about this move though was that I'd be moving down from a "prosumer" camera to something slightly flimsier.

Well it looks like the rumours of the higher-end A77 were true. Take a look here. I'm completely sold. It's the A77 for me please.

Anyone want to buy a used - but mint - Canon EOS 50D?

I have one of these - Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR Camera. It's a brilliant camera, rugged, packed with features and has very good image quality.

But I'm thinking of selling it and getting one of these - a Sony SLT-A55V. This is a very high tech camera which ditches the traditional optical viewfinder for an electronic one. This has many traditional photographers crossing themselves and reaching for the garlic, but for me it has many plus points.

My eyesight is pretty poor and I often struggle when using optical viewfinders because even on very good cameras like the EOS 50D they aren't particularly bright. This makes it harder for me to judge composition and more importantly focus.

I love living here in Dorset, it means that not going to the beach doesn't involve being stuck in a caravan in the minging weather.

I must admit that I've fallen out of love with photography this year. Being busy with our new addition (the wonderful baby Will) limited my time for the hobby and over time I've become somewhat disillusioned with it. It's not helped that none of my recent pictures have been any good and people have told me so. You need some encouragement to keep up with learning a new hobby - when you get the opposite it can take the wind from your sails.

To be honest if wifey would let me I'd probably put my DSLR on Ebay tomorrow because I'd rather the cash than something I didn't really use. I've been considering selling the DSLR and just relying on my SLR film camera. I've sold one 1.6x crop lens today and have another I could sell. Leaving my best lens for the film camera.

Would that be mad? Probably. Though would fit in my long term goal of buying a full frame DSLR should my love of the hobby return. I'm just starting to feel the love coming back. Not from playing with my very expensive DSLR, no, by messing around with the Vignette app on my new phone and using my film SLR.

Taken with Vignette on a HTC Desire phone.

The Photography Monthly magazine redesign is truly awful. Hardly any content now (I think they must have sacked most of the team) and what remains is presented in huge text to hide its brevity - like a magazine for primary school children. Used to be a great magazine - just a few months ago. No I won't be renewing my subscription.

The last few issues that have popped through my letterbox have been absolutely dire. If you were willing to actually read every word I think it'd probably take you 15 minutes. There is very little in there worth looking at.

Grumpy Bob has gone, for example.

It was the only photo magazine I subscribed to and it is now a shadow of its former seld. I keep getting emails and mail inviting me to resubscribe but I won't be wasting any more money on the magazine. A real shame - because it was once a great mag.

A bit of a wander around Forston starting in Charlton Down. This is the first time I'd explored these public footpaths. It didn't go entirely to plan - the map was rather confusing at one point and lead me half a mile across the wrong field. I then had to trudge back again.

But I had a good walk over three and a half miles, with all the rough ground and up and down it felt much further.

All of these pictures were taken with the rather wonderfully sharp Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

Photos appear after the jump...

Did you have a good weekend? Ours was pretty good - the weather seems to have returned to a summer theme here in Dorset. So we were able to get out and about.

The twins haven't always been easy to cope with over the weekend though - we're definitely in the middle of the terrible twos. At times it seems that our placid little baby Will is the best behaved out of the five of us.

Yesterday afternoon I took a drive along the coast between Abbotsbury and Burton Bradstock and some of the photos I took are below. I'd love to go back to these locations at a more photogenic time of day - but having small children does often make that difficult.

Photos after the page jump...