Stuff by Sarah

First Macro Photos

Fri, 16 May, 2008 – 11:44 pm

I managed to grab a quick half an hour this evening to try out my new tripod and macro lens. The tripod is great however I'll be buying a mini or micro ball head to go on it. Whilst you don't need one, I'd like a quick release plate as it'd be so much handier. However it's sturdy and easily supports my camera and new lens (which weigh around 1.1kg together).

I managed to find a few interesting shots to take. Unfortunately the better flowers are around the front of the house, but I didn't fancy advertising my camera gear to anyone passing by. Luckily the flowers on the herbs are starting to come out which made for a couple of interesting photos, but my favourite (and sharpest) photo is of the purple flower above. This is off a weed (they seem to make the best flowers!) that I spotted.

The result from this lens however is amazing. I saw a tiny little insect sitting on a strawberry plant leaf and did my best to try and focus in on it and take some shots. I'm not sure if the insect was dead or alive (possibly asleep), as it didn't move, but a slight breeze made the leaf tremor every so often, plus I'm still working on the sharp focusing. However the detail that this little black bug had (as you can see below) is just amazing. Whilst I'm not an insect fan, and hate even looking at spiders, the detail that you can see from this lens is just fantastic. Hopefully we'll have some good weather to go out on the weekend and grab some more shots further afield than the garden!

View all my first macro shots

Posted in Photography | No Comments »

New Camera Equipment

Thu, 15 May, 2008 – 9:12 am

A couple of weeks ago I had a bit of a small win on an online gambling site (I only signed up to play Deal or no Deal!), nothing major, but it was enough to let me buy a few bits I'd been wanting to get, pay for a long weekend away and put the rest into savings. Yesterday the money cleared in my bank account so I've been shopping!

I've been wanting to buy the Canon 100mm Macro lens since just after Christmas, but couldn't really afford it nor justify the expense, however with this unexpected cash I figured that I now could! So after looking on a price comparison site we found that Jessops had it up for £379 however with the right code (LENS10) you could get 10% off the price, then there's also a Canon cashback of £40 on the lens, so the final price will be £301, including free delivery.

I then took a look on Warehouse Express and found a nice compact Manfrotto Tripod which is exactly what I want. Although I already have a tripod (a cheapy thing from Amazon), it's quite big and bulky. This new tripod is 44cm when collapsed, weighs about 2lb, and comes in its own little carry bag, much easier to take around when out and about shooting photos. I also bought a lens hood from my new lens from them too.

The tripod's already arrived, but the lens and hood will take a few more days unfortunately. However they should all be here in time for our weekend away next month, up at the Lake District. Expect to see lots of macro shots in the future!

Posted in Photography | 5 Comments »

The Photoshop Anthology - Free SitePoint Book

Wed, 14 May, 2008 – 5:25 pm

Looks like SitePoint are giving away another of their books in PDF for a limited time only. Go grab the Photoshop Anthology within 29 days for free.

Posted in Web Development | 5 Comments »

UK Tax Change… Again!

Wed, 14 May, 2008 – 4:57 pm

Further to my previous post on UK Tax Changes we've got another change. They're now increasing the free pay amount by £600 for the present year. This gives a £120 saving over the year compared to before the announcement yesterday.

What does this now mean? Well working on the figures (note I use the self employment figures but I'm sure they're similar), if you're earning between £6035 and roughly £10,500 you're still worse off, but if you're single then you can apply for Working Tax Credits to help boost your income a little and these are being increased more than normal this year. For couples then the threshold is roughly £16,000, for a single person it's around £12,500-13k. Your best option there is to check on the Inland Revenue site for Working Tax Credits.

With the change now in place, compared to our old system, I'll be about £150 better off, nothing major but it's better than being out of pocket.

Posted in Business | 2 Comments »

Personal Stuff 11/05/08

Sun, 11 May, 2008 – 10:15 pm

It feels like it's been a long week this week, but not in a bad way! We kicked off the week with a day off on Monday as it was a national bank holiday, it was also my birthday (21 again!). I had thought about going out down the beach or for a walk along one of our many beautiful walks around here, however by late morning it had clouded over and I also didn't feel too well so I spent part of the morning taking macro shots of some flowers indoors, and we just stayed on the sofa and watched TV in the afternoon. By late afternoon I'd woken up and we went out for dinner at Kuki's which is a mediterranean restaurant over in West Kirby, a town that looks out onto the River Dee. We'd been there before but were a little rushed for time so this time we could take out time and relax a bit more. Dinner was great, their food is so nice, and the servings are so large there was no room for dessert!

After dinner we took a walk down to the Marina and around the Marina (photos). West Kirby is a gorgeous place and the sunset there is amazing. My photos don't do it justice but we only had our mobile phone cameras on us for once!

The weather this week has been gorgeous. Clearly our summer is here, similar to how it was last year, I give it another 3 weeks! On Wednesday we had to pop out so Dave could go to the doctor's and I had a quick think and figured why not take the day off. We hadn't really gone out on Monday, so we drove up to Formby Point where there is a Red Squirrel sanctuary there (red squirrels are almost extinct in the UK due to the grey squirrel). Unfortunately we only saw one squirrel and it was too fast and too far away to get a photo of it. The weather was quite warm so no doubt it was too warm for the squirrels to show their faces. We'll no doubt return soon but either on a cooler day or earlier in the morning when it's maybe a little quieter and there's more chance to see them out.

We then took a drive up to Southport where we got some lunch and took a walk along the pier there. Not really a traditional seaside town though. Then we drove back down to Crosby beach where Anthony Gormley's Another Place can be found. 100 cast iron statues dotted across the beach. I've seen plenty of photos of these on Flickr but it was quite a surreal feeling to stand on the beach and just see the statues all over the place and disappearing into the distance. Some were partly submerged by the Irish sea, some were clear and we could walk over to them. All in all a wonderful day out

Saturday we drove down to my friend's house as she was having a party of her birthday which is next week. An afternoon/evening of drinking Pimms and Lemonade, playing on her new Wii Console and Wii Fit at midnight (the hula hooping gets funnier after a few drinks!). We drove back today in beautiful sunshine (thankfully the car has air conditioning), yet arrived home to grey clouds and shortly after we had a thunderstorm! Ahh the typical British summer!

Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »