Behind The Photographs

I had the opportunity to shoot with a Nikon D5100 recently and to take it on a trip to the United States.

I have been shooting with a higher-end camera – the Nikon D7000 – for a while now. It is a lovely camera, but it weighs 220g (almost half a pound) more than the D5100.

And because I prefer to carry as little weight as possible when I am traveling, I grabbed the chance to take the lighter camera and just one lens – the Nikon 35mm f1.8 AF-S – to the USA.

I have used the D60 and before that the D40, and both of them are very good cameras. So I had some expectation of what the more modern D5100 would be able to deliver.

The D5100 – D7000 Comparison

The D5100 and the D7000 use the same sensor, but the image-processing engine within the two cameras is different.

There is no doubt that the D5100 can produce high image quality – as witness this shot and the crop from it:

So this comparison is not about the image quality, but about the handling.

The D5100 In Use

The D5100 is a pleasure to shoot in all but one respect. That one respect is the essential one of being able to see whether the camera has focused on the subject.

I already knew from the D40 and the D60 that there is no lock button for the focus point. So if one catches the rear four-way controller, the focus point will be moved – to the side or up or down, depending on which part of the controller one catches inadvertently.

The standard way to deal with this is to get into the habit of hitting the OK button in the center of the four-way controller when one raises the camera to shoot. That centers the focus point.

So, picture the scene: the camera goes to my eye and I look through the viewfinder. Except that in California, the light is bright and contrasty, rather than overcast and cloudy as it had been in Edinburgh.

I have hit the OK button – so I know the focus point is in the center of the frame as I look through the viewfinder.

But exactly where is the center of the frame?

You might think that is easy to answer, but with your eye jammed up against the viewfinder, it is not so straightforward to see.

Now on the D7000, the active focus points are big and bright: When the red light on the active focus point lights up, you can see it.

Not so on the D5100. The focus points are tiny and in bright sunlight against a busy scene, it is very difficult to see the little red light that lights up on the active focus point when the camera achieves focus.

Remember that you would not looking at a blank white background like that shown in these illustrations. You would be looking at a busy and perhaps colourful scene where you have to pick the red focus light out of a confusion of shapes and colours.

Sure, after a second or two of hunting for the illumination of the active focus point and repeatedly half-pressing the shutter, you will see it.

But those are precious seconds when you want to be focusing and shooting. And the feeling of uncertainty that it causes is not conducive to keeping a steady hand and a clear mind while shooting.

Conclusion

This is a step backward for Nikon compared to the focus points on the D40 and the D60.

And that is as much as I want to say about the D5100 in the real world: Great camera – pity about the poor illumination of the active focus point.

Kids ‘N Blankets

Okay, so I am busy chopping up vegetables for my salad just now when I look outside my window here in Edinburgh at the communal space outside this block of Victorian flats – and what do I see?

Four kids who look to be about aged seven through eleven paired off (girl boy girl boy, that is) playing outside and having plain, old-fashioned fun.

They are sitting on some sort of blanket. All they have is a deck of cards between them all.

There’s no TV, no computer, no smartphone in sight.

Nothing except the outside is within reach.

Wheelies And Wet Clothing

A bright-red plastic wheelie thing is sitting in the stubbly green grass some feet away from them.

And because it’s one of those rare days in Edinburgh when the sun is actually warm enough to dry clothing, someone has taken advantage of that fact so bits of clothing, bath towels and socks are gently swinging back and forth drying on bright red and blue clothespins.

Dangling from a long rope hoisted up on a bit of land, they are not far from where the children are clustered.

The kids’ faces are first buried in their cards and then checking out their friends, as a steady stream of smiles appear on their intent faces.

A Temporary Blemish On The Scene Of Serenity

The scene is marred for me a bit as another boy who looks like he’s about twelve or so is standing in another part of the garden, pointing his play gun at the world.

Happily from my point of view, the kids are paying him no mind. They are laughing and talking, and I see them concentrating as they take turns with their card game.

Lawn Chairs Amidst The Cobblestone

I walk to the front of our flat and I look outside: As if to equalize the children in the backyard, a middle-aged couple has plunked down some lawn chairs right outside on the entrance to their building across the cobbled street.

The man’s white hair is glistening in the sun. The woman seated next to him has a big, droopy straw hat protecting her hair. They are both lolling about, crossing their legs casually as they mark their territory.

It’s going on five, but daylight lasts long into the evening here now because we are so far north.

Lazing In A Bathing Suit On A Sofa

I’m reminded of the couple in their thirties whom I saw yesterday. I’ve seen them before, smack there in their front yard as I go past them en route to walking through the meadows to get into town.

Believe it or not, they have planted a beaten-up sofa in the front and it becomes their official sun deck whenever a hint of rays comes out. Yesterday when it was gorgeous too they were smiling out there on the sofa – the woman in her bathing suit, the man in his shorts, both clutching tall drinks.

Floral Beauties And Bounding Dogs

The soft white honeysuckle clusters, the fuschia-colored rhododendrons, the bowers of bright yellow oh-what’s-the-name-of-those-flowers bunches that flash gaily in the sun…

The rhapsodising, rippling birds whose songs seems to cascade with unusual clarity through the refreshing skies…

The students gathered at The Meadows, waiting at smoking barbecues or leaping at flying balls or talking in high spirits with their friends in the heat of the sun…

The wonderful dogs of every description who look like they are in doggie heaven as they cleave the warmth to their bouncy bodies, bounding right and left and every which way, their tails wagging madly trying to keep up with their bubbling enthusiasm about being in the midst of all of this with their owners on such a glorious day…

“It’s summer, summer, SUMMER!” everyone and everything seems to be chanting.

Aye, lads and lassies, ’tis true — right here in Edinburgh, summer has finally arrived!

We were in Berkeley for a week recently, visiting a lifelong friend of Tamara’s – a lovely woman named Judy who is ill.

After a short flight from Edinburgh (where we live) to London Heathrow, and a couple of hours wandering around the airport shops, it was onwards with a non-stop flight to San Francisco.

It was late afternoon when we landed and somewhat later when we arrived via the AirTrain at the car hire counter at the airport.

After we did the paperwork, we walked through to the car park. “Pick any one of those,” said the woman in the booth and we looked at a long row of very big cars.

We chose the smallest one.

I was slightly tense about driving because I hadn’t driven on the right (wrong) side of the road for a while. And after an eleven-hour flight and feeling a bit dazed, I had to ask directions to get out of the car park…

In fact, the route to Berkeley is pretty straightforward – just take the highway to the Bay Bridge.

The Bay Bridge

The Bay Bridge is one of the longest bridges in the world at four and a half miles excluding the approaches. And the traffic is four lanes wide – and as you can see, it is all going one way.

I did wonder at one point where the oncoming traffic was.

In fact the traffic coming the other way is on the upper deck of the bridge (above all the ironwork in this photo), as we found out when we drove from Berkeley into San Francisco one day.

Finding Berkeley

Driving off the bridge and then eventually on to the Berkeley off-ramp led us to a winding spaghetti of roads filled with commuter traffic all seeming to be heading for one converging spot.

The sheer volume of traffic plus the early evening California sun made the whole journey hyper-real.

Then we turned off into Berkeley and it was like stepping off the world.

The houses are low lying and there are trees and flowering bushes growing in gardens – and all under the rich blue of the California sky.

It is not all beautiful, and there are rougher spots in the town, but all in all it is quite beguiling.

Tamara worked in San Francisco years ago and she lived in Berkeley. She tells me that Berkeley has grown a lot in the intervening years – with more people and more buzz.

And Tamara and I visited San Francisco for a week or so about ten years ago, and we spent a day in Berkeley.

My only clear memory of Berkeley, however, is of the short-stack pancake breakfast we had in a cafe nestled against the hills. That also was in the company of my wife’s friend, Judy.

First Impressions Of Berkeley

It’s not easy to accurately encapsulate a town in a few sentences, of course.

One thing I noticed though is that besides the university students, Berkeley has its share of alternative lifestyle seekers, and its down-and-outs and its crazy people.

One thing you don’t see, however, is people hurrying along. They might be jogging – and there were a lot of people doing that – but you don’t see commuter-style hurrying.

I Go Grab A Coffee

Having driven from the airport and checked in to our hotel, I was feeling very lively even after the eleven hour flight, so I walked up the street to get a coffee.

The cafe section of the Au Coquelet cafe is a big open-plan room and it was wall to wall with people with their laptops open.

There were some couples and small groups, but mostly people were on their own. They were buried in the laptops and the cafe was quiet, like a study hall rather than a cafe.

I wondered – was this Berkeley? Had America moved into the cocooned world of online reality?

Thankfully no, but it is pretty quiet in there.

By the way, I plan to write an article shortly about how we got on line with our computer and how we made telephone calls without breaking the bank.

The Hills Beckon

We stayed at a hotel on University Avenue, which is a very long street – and over the coming days I kept looking at the tree-covered hills that seemed to begin just at the top of the street.

And one afternoon, Tamara and I started driving up the street towards the hills.

It seemed that wherever we branched off and whichever street we took, it eventually petered out into a private road leading to a lab or some other building belonging to the university.

A couple of times we asked directions for how to circumnavigate the university grounds, and eventually we got directions to how to find a clear road that would lead to higher ground.

This next photo is a shot looking back into the town from after we had just received directions. At this point we were not very high up, and I had not idea how much more of the hills lay above us.

I am not quite sure what we were expecting – certainly not that we would be up in the clouds, surrounded by trees in a misty atmosphere that reminded me of forests in South America (where I travelled some years ago).

‘What a nice surprise: Welcome to the New World,’ I thought to myself as we drove along sandy roads through forest-covered hills.

Eventually we got a bit lost, and after a long descent we found ourselves headed for the on-ramp to join a highway heading towards somewhere or other far from Berkeley.

So we turned around and headed back up until we came to a mist-shrouded crossroads. We pulled to the side and waited for a car to pull alongside so we could ask directions.

Commuting, Northern California Style

Eventually an upmarket car pulled up and we asked directions. The woman driving the car was smartly dressed and she had the air of someone who had just finished a day’s work.

She gave us directions and we drove on.

As we drove, I pondered what a lovely way it must be to finish a day at the office by commuting home over these hills and into Berkeley.