Singles in January - Phoenix

I was a part of a group of participants who undertook the ‘Singles in January PAD (photo a day)’ challenge on Amin’s other website Serious Compacts, the challenge recently ended and I am uploading are all the images I have submitted for the challenge in an album (I will upload some of the photos I didn’t use on my website and some on flickr).

Some of you are familiar with the Singles in January challenge, for the uninitiated the challenge comprises of shooting with a camera and lens combo of your choice (this combo cannot be changed for the duration the challenge, any photos submitted for the challenge must be shot with your chosen combo) and taking a photo a day (it has to be on the day, so taking 31 photos in one go and submitting 1 per day won’t work).

The challenge was gruelling but fun and some of the images submitted were among the best images I have ever seen (you should really check it out here if you haven’t seen it yet), other than that I felt I have formed a bond with my fellow participants and really made me think outside the square and use every function my camera has to offer. This challenge gave me a renewed appreciation to my “classic” NEX-5 and I feel that it has made me evolve as a photographer.

The uploaded images can be found here in one of my albums.

 

I would be lying if I said it was perfect, considering the type of shots I took I really wished it had a viewfinder rather than just the LCD. The focus peaking feature really did help when focusing, but wasnt so useful on really high ISO settings and shooting in almost complete darkness. As for IQ I was quite satisfied with it and would be quite happy to have the same IQ for my next camera.

When I mentioned that I had to "think outside the square" and "use all of it's functions", some examples was when I was shooting low light (which was the majority of my submissions) I used the camera's Anti Motion Blur function (which kept the settings I have previously entered in manual mode) in combination with getting the metering right let me shoot at 1/5 second sometimes even longer without the need of a tripod (all my images were shot handheld). Another useful function was the Sweep panorama, since we were locked in with the chosen lenses I couldn't shoot wide if I wanted to since I was using a 35mm (50mm due to the 1.5 crop), so I changed the sweep panorama shoot direction from left to right to down to up, planned my framing and composition beforehand, shot the panorama with a 50mm in the portrait orientation and voila! wide angled shot without a wide angle lens  

In the end I was satisfied with the NEX-5, it's far from perfect (then again no camera is) but other than wishing for an EVF I was happy with the results.

P.S. Your submissions this month was really good and I have enjoyed it a lot, I hope I can see more of your work. Also my apologies that I couldnt comment on all of the images, I was really burnt out for a few days.

 

Yup, I'm one of those folks who prefer B/W, I shoot colour too, but not nearly as much as B/W

 

I have finished uploading all of the images (including the ones I did not submit for this challenge) in my website, I shall upload it shortly in flickr and add it to the Talknex flickr stream

 

Thanks! I really liked the photos submitted, I'm still waiting for a decision on how Mark is planning to have a book made up.

 

That sounds great mate, like you I'm also usually strapped for time working during the day and going to school in the evenings (hence the reason for the amount of low light shots) the good news is the NEX performs really well in the evenings and the anti motion blur makes hard to do low light shots achievable.

 

Thanks dude! You should check the other participants' submissions as well, they're really awesome.