The Sun and Snow

A window of clear blue sky opened just as I was about to set off on foot to the shops. Lovely – time to fix the polarising filter to my 18-55mm kit lens... And who's this sitting on the ledge outside? Céleste telling me to come into the garden, so I do, and we circumnavigate the grounds together. She's in her element here – unlike lazy boy Czestuś, who's happy snoozing in the warm kitchen.

Below: house and car, covered in snow. I don't fancy driving. The walk will do me good, even with a rucksack of provisions including a large bag of dry cat-food. In winter, the garden is threadbare, vegetation is at its lowest ebb. Spring is three months away. 

Below: I take the back way into town. No pavement, but then no traffic. The sun and the snow bring to mind Count Basie's The Kid from Red Bank.

Below: ulica Słoneczna ('sunny street'), looking down towards ul. Główna ('main street').

Below: junction of ulica Główna and ul. Wolska. An atmosphere of small-town America in the 1950s.

Below: the local shopping centre/business district. The building to the right was completed last year, and awaits new tenants. I hope that a Nepalese restaurant pops up here! Or at least an indoor kebab bar. We shall see...

I walk home along ul. Wolska, turning into the farm track that is ul. Jabłoniowa ('apple-tree street'), cut through an orchard and then down ul. Spokojna ('peaceful street') to the level crossing, then along ul. Kolejowa ('railway street') back home. By this time, a sheet of dark grey cloud has swept in from the west. Never mind – more sunny, snowy days are forecast for the next few days. I shall make the most of them, and eschew use of the car until the snow finally melts. Lent starts on 18 February.

This time two years ago:
Cleanliness, tidiness and idleness.

This time three years ago:
The Search for Perfection

This time four years ago:
Grabów, Krasnowola and Jeziorki Północne

This time eight years ago:
1929-1939; 2008-2018?

This time ten years ago:
Track works between W-wa Okęcie and W-wa Dawidy

This time 12 years ago:
The benefits of extending the human lifespan 

This time 15 years ago:
New Year's stocktaking

This time last 16 years ago:
A walk in the wild winter woods

This time 17 years ago:
Now that's what I call winter vol. 12

This time 18 years ago:
When the day starts getting longer

 

More from Walker's London

"Great was my joy with London at my feet -
All London mine, five shillings in hand
And not expected back till after tea!"

- from John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells; Chapter 6, London.

My morning meeting on Chancery Lane over, time to get in my daily dose of walking London thoroughfares, narrow and broad, well-trodden and little known. Follow me, then, on a Most beautiful sunny day in late January, for a walking tour of the West End...

Just off Chancery Lane is Carey Street, once home to the bankruptcy court, hence the old saying that someone's 'on Carey Street', it suggests that they are insolvent.

Below: turn through 180 degrees, and here's the back of the Royal Courts of Justice.

"Five floors up the Charing Cross Road and never a job at the top of them." Up there, maybe, still work the successors to fictional theatrical agent, Raymond Duck.

This is the lowest of low seasons for tourists - as a result, a walk along Oxford Street around lunchtime was actually pleasant - not being jostled by frenzied shoppers barging by with large bags and boxes, I could focus on the architecture. Below: look up from the shop fronts! An eclectic mix of facades at the Tottenham Court Road end. The area around the junction of Oxford St, Tottenham Court Rd and Charing Cross Road is still a huge building site after the best part of a decade, given the overrun on Crossrail.

Below: the architectural splendour of what was the Waring & Gillow's furniture showroom, now clothing retailer H&M's flagship London store.

Below: the 1950s replacement for the John Lewis department store destroyed during WW2. A rare example of the British expression of modernist architecture that I actually like.

Below: by Bond Street, Debenhams flagship store, visually enhanced in 2013 with a new facade.

Below: Selfridges. Opened in 1909, this department store is considered the best on a street known for its department stores.

Below: waiting at Marble Arch for the Central Line train back to Ealing Broadway.

Below: glorious winter afternoon, Cleveland Park.

This time three years ago:
Daffodils and crocuses in bloom, in January!

This time four years ago:
Populist start to election campaign

This time five years ago:
Straż Ochrony Kolei explained

This time six years ago:
The end of winter? So early?

This time seven years ago:
How much education for the nation? 

This time eight years ago:
To the Catch - short story

This time nine years ago:
Eternal Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
From the family archives

London in the hot autumn sun

Been a busy five days; Warsaw-Rzeszów-Kraków-Wrocław-Warsaw-London. Arriving at "London" Luton on Sunday, I find the weather remains Mediterranean; bright blue skies and one-layer temperatures. Jacket stowed in rucksack, I walk to Luton "Airport" Parkway station and head for Ealing. Work on Monday, long meeting in Central London, lots of walking and architectural photography opportunities. Still Mediterranean. At times I feel like I'm in Gibraltar or Malta, familiar architecture and street furniture under a hot sun. It's 26C and again my jacket is in my rucksack.

Below: What's the English for kamienica? This. What English word describes an elegant, low-rise building consisting of many flats? This is Transept St, W2, Hyde Park Mansions; but not every mansion is a kamienica. Nor is every kamienica a tenement - a word associated with Glaswegian poverty.

Below: The Royal Exchange pub on Sale Place W2. In this weather, in the second half of September? Could well be Gibraltar.

The last two British telephone boxes I saw were both wooden replicas inside the Polish offices of British firm. Here's the real thing, which I strongly associate from childhood. (I close my eyes and recall the pong - a mixture of urine, cheap disinfectant and stale tobacco). The solid clunk of the bakelite telephone handset, the brass door handle; a true icon of Britishness (in a world where every other object is said to be iconic). Located on the corner of Shillibeer Place, named after local George Shillibeer, who, in 1829, initiated London's first horse-drawn bus service.

Below: beautiful late-Victorian/Edwardian townhouse, Devonshire, Weymouth St. "Strite out a' Maory Parpins."

Left: St Marks of St Marylebone Anglican church. (What a name!) Again, that incongruous blue sky would have me place the picture in Australia or New Zealand, or even in some cantonment in Hyderabad province, rather than on the Old Marylebone Road. Built in 1872, Gothic Revival, the very high water mark of Brictorian Britain.

Right: I give you this photo as a quiz question; this incongruous white stone church stands at odds with its very British surroundings; on the basis of the other photos above, could anyone care to suggest what this building is, who built it and when? The clues lie in the strict, sparse architectural vocabulary; fortified and pure.

Onwards to Paddington Station, and the short eight-minute journey to Ealing Broadway via the Great Western Railway (good to see the name back again). Ealing Broadway is being refurbished ahead of the opening of CrossRail, but delays mean this will not happen this year as planned.

Below: a delightful sight! An Austin Healey 3000 Mk II passes me on my way to my father's house. If I were ever to buy a petrol-engined four-wheeled vehicle again it would have to be a) classic and b) convertible. This car dates back to 1963; magnificent!

This time last year:
Full-frame and mirrorless
[my thoughts on the new Nikons, launched last month]

This time five years ago:
The rich, the poor, the entrepreneur... and the banker

This time seven years ago:
At the hipsters' ball

This time eight years ago:
Cycling through the spirit of place

This time nine years ago:
Invaders or liberators?

This time ten years ago:
Adlestrop, en route to Kraków

This time 11 years ago:
Return to Zamienie

Jeziorki, magic hour, late-May

After a lengthy afternoon nap, time for a walk, just as the sun was sinking low. Now that the retention ponds are complete, Jeziorki has become even more attractive as a place to live. Ul. Dumki, once an impassible bog and dumping ground for fly-tipped rubbish, is now somewhere you want to walk. The further, unasphalted reaches of the road can be turned into a muddy mess whenever it rains by car tyres, so it would be good so see it turned into a footpath/cycle path closed off for cars. And the main purpose of the redevelopment of this area, flood prevention, is working fine as the past few days of heavy rain have not resulted in soggy fields and bits of Jeziorki under water.

Known by film-makers as 'the magic hour', 30 minutes before and after the sun sets, this period of the day when accompanied by the right weather, touches the soul. Click on the photos below to enlarge and enjoy. A minimal amount of tweaking of saturation and vividity in Adobe Lightroom was used to get the sense of what I saw and felt.

Soundtrack in my mind as I did the 4km circular walk - the Beach Boys' sublime Surf's Up.

This time last year:
Railway history - the big picture

This time three years ago:
New lick of paint for Powiśle

This time four years ago:
The secrets of success - intelligence, drive and luck

D3200 - first comparative test

Time to take an objective eye at my recent investment in a Nikon D3200, which replaces my D40 as lightweight, take-anywhere digital single lens reflex (DLSR) camera. The new camera, launched last April, boasts 24 megapixels, the D40 (which dates back to November 2006) a mere 6.1 MP. Both these cameras are 'DX' format, which means the sensor is not full-frame (for a sensor the size of an old 35mm film frame, choose a Nikon FX format camera, like the D800 or D4, which cost five and ten times more respectively).

The two photos below were taken on the D3200 and D40 respectively, perched atop of a tripod, both set at 200 ISO, in 'program' mode, with Picture Control set to 'vivid', colour balance to 'auto' and Image Quality set to 'JPEG fine'. The lenses used were both 18-55 zooms, the kit lens that came with the cameras, the D3200's lens having Vibration Reduction (VR) but otherwise identical optically.

Given the fact that the settings were identical, my first surprise is that the metering systems of the two cameras differed by two-thirds of a stop (the D40 metered the scene at 1/250th sec at f8, while the D3200 opted for 1/320th sec at f9). So before comparing the two photos, I altered the exposure of the D40 by minus one-third of a stop, and of the D3200 by plus one-third of a stop.

Above: the D3200's rendition of the scene, below, ditto from the D40. The image from the D3200 is visibly cleaner, crisper, even when shown at a small size (though feel free to click to enlarge). The tinted section within the yellow boxes will be enlarged, to show that difference in pixel count does matter.

Below: close-ups taken from both cameras, the D3200's is top. This is a 130% enlargement from the original size frame.

Below: the smaller number of pixels means the frame from the D40 needs to be blown up by more than 300% to get the same size image as that above.

This now, is Most visible (especially if you click to enlarge). Compare the little tree in the foreground, or the row of windows on the roof of the building.

Let us now move on to Vibration Reduction. This is, in my opinion, the greatest advance in lens design in recent years. The ability to take acceptably sharp shots on slow lenses (ie. one with a small hole letting in light) makes a huge difference. Before VR, the rule-of-thumb was that to hand-hold a sharp shot, the longest exposure you could get away with was the reciprocal of the focal length (ie. 1/50th of a second for a 50mm lens, 1/25th of a second for a 24mm lens etc). VR (or IS in Canon language) lets you hand-hold at three to four stops longer (ie. 1/6th of a second for a 50mm lens, 1/3rd of a second for a 24mm lens).

So then - below are two whole-frame images hand held at f4 with the lens set at 24mm; the top one with VR switched off (1/4th of a second), the bottom one with VR switched on (1/3rd of a second).

The difference is clearly visible - and I made a real effort to hold as still as possible while taking both photos. I'm not entirely satisfied with the sharpness of the lower photo (with VR on), so a slightly shorter exposure (say 1/5th of a second) should be acceptable with the lens set at 24mm (equivalent to 35mm on a full-frame DSLR or 35mm film camera).

All in all, I'm delighted with the technological progress that six years have brought in terms of digital imaging, and very happy to have bought the Nikon D3200, a camera I can whole-heartedly recommend to anyone (except camera snobs and professionals shooting images for billboards).

This time last year:
Miserable depths of winter (no snow)

This time two years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)

This time three years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time four years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time five years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts

Time for a new camera

The world didn't end today, but my 18-200mm Nikkor finally packed up. While snapping traffic on Marszałkowska this lunchtime, the zoom mechanism failed; it would not zoom back all the way to 18mm. I could push it back in, but that's not the point. This lens is now approaching its sixth birthday, and it has every right to fail, being plastic rather than metal, having been built down to a price and weight. After a couple of years, the rubber zooming ring came off, and more recently, the zooming mechanism has been getting stiffer and stiffer at the long end.

Today, at -11C, something inside finally decided to snap (I can hear it rattling around inside the lens). Should I repair it? Worth a try, but not right now. I bought my 18-200mm Nikkor in March 2007 for 3,000 zlotys (today, the newer VRII version of the 18-200mm Nikkor with zoom lock can be bought for 2,699 zlotys).

What do I need more, I thought to myself as I made my way to the Nikon dealer at Promenada, a new lens or a new body? For 1,959 zlotys* I treated myself instead to a new Nikon D3200 with 18-55mm VR lens. The specifications on this camera are mind-blowing. It boasts 24 megapixels (compared to 12 on my D80 and six on my D40). It can shoot movies in high definition, it has a larger screen on the back and a wider range of ISO settings. Most importantly, the sensor's high dynamic range gives more detail in the shadows and more detail in the highlights.

The D3200 is a direct descendant of my old D40 (bought second hand three and half years ago). The D40 was replaced by the D40X, the D40X by the D60, the D60 by the D3000, the D3000 by the D3100, and, earlier this year, the D3100 by the D3200.

Other than the huge jump in megapixels and the high dynamic range, it is VR (vibration reduction) that makes this camera such a noticeable advance over the D40. In dark conditions, I can hand-hold the D3200 to take a shake-free shot at quarter of a second; the old non-VR version of the 18-55mm would require a 30th of a second to get the same sharpness in low light.

My old D80 with 18-200mm lens weighs in on the kitchen scales at 1,300g, while the new D3200 with 18-55mm lens is just 800g (both with strap, battery, UV filter and memory card). That's half a kilo less to lug around my neck. (The old D40 weighs 780g).

The D80 will be consigned to long lens duty (wildlife and aircraft), serving now as the permanent body for the 80-400mm Nikkor (a lens that needs a body-mounted autofocus motor, that the entry-level D40 and D3200 both lack).

A lot more about the new D3200 anon. It's a magnificent camera that puts professional ones from a few years back to shame. If you're not a photo-snob and can live with the epithets 'entry-level', 'consumer', 'DX sensor', 'polycarbonate body' etc, this is a camera that will not disappoint.

* That's 1,959 zlotys complete with a 16GB SanDisk memory card and a Tiffen Haze -1 filter. Cheapest price of these two items online totals 85 zlotys, so camera price is 1,874 złotys.