Thanks. And I've learned a new word - Pareidolia!

We were actually very lucky to see the organ like that. Unknown to us at the time, it is in the middle of a huge restoration project. Most of the pipes were removed for whatever organ restorers do to them and the instrument was surrounded by scaffolding. The pipes were reinstated and the scaffolding removed only a couple of weeks before we were there. And the pipes that you see have been re-gilded, so that bright golden colour really is the colour of gold. What's left to do is the noisy bit - fine-tuning each of the 5,767 pipes. That started shortly after our visit and will take a couple of months .

Steve

The Royal Society has digitised many original documents from its archives and made them accessible online. Among them are some contributions relating to photography that might be of interest. A couple of examples:
- Henry Fox Talbot "An account of some recent improvements in photography" (1841)
- William Crookes "On the photography of the moon" (1886)
Crookes had access to a telescope that forum members who photograph the moon might like to get their hands on - mount and telescope weighed about 5 tons and was moved equatorially by means of a small water mill.

One wonders what the authors of these documents would make of the photographic tools and techniques that are now at our disposal.

Enjoy searching the archives at link .

Steve

Now for a few from the inside of Norwich Cathedral. Whether by design or lucky accident (I suspect the former), a bright day outside brings some striking effects inside. Here are some examples. All with K3 + 16-85mm, handheld.

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as usual.

1. Window



2. Elaborate setting for a seat



3. Organ, candle, pillars



Steve

Thanks. That mono one definitely works better than colour for me, hence putting it in the set, but for me at least the others work better with colour. An interesting but unanswerable question is whether I'd have taken different subjects or the same subjects differently if I'd been restricted to mono .

As for the person in the mono photo, a similar shot without anyone in it didn't work as well for me, the sense of scale was lost. And in any case, it would have been rude to have asked her to move out of the shot, particularly as we were both part of the same family group wandering round the building and Mrs L and I were staying with her for the weekend .

Steve

Some from a visit to Norwich Cathedral during my first trip to Norfolk for about 65 years . The day was very bright and the light was doing interesting things when it penetrated into the interior of the building. These are from the cloisters - intricate pattern, minimalistic simplicity, and acknowledgement of the current enthusiasm for mono. All with K3 + 16-85mm, handheld.

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as usual.

1. Pattern



2. Minimalism



3. Mono



Steve

Hmmm... it depends on the distance scale you're looking at. Random noise on a regular lattice (technical term!) is still random at the distance scale of the lattice. If you can't visually resolve smaller distances than the separation between lattice points then film grain can be reproduced on a pixel lattice at the resolution that matters, any finer detail in the film is not seen so is not relevant.

Here's an interesting article on film grain link. Among the very techy stuff are a couple of conceptual points that seem relevant here:
- Film grain that we perceive is clusters of silver grains, not the grains themselves. So it's the size of the clusters that matters, not the size of the silver grains.
- Film grain is the product of the human eye and brain working in combination .... Thus, film grain is “perceived” property rather than an actual “particle.” It is, however, real visual phenomenon.
It seems to me that as long as the digital 'grain' is perceived to be the same as perceived film grain then it's job done, even though the way it's generated is different. After all, who complains that applying unsharp mask is not the real thing as it's just altering perception of sharpness rather than increasing 'real' sharpness?

Steve

Can't be sure, of course, but it might well be via an Employee Ownership Trust by means of which Trustees, appointed by employees, hold the majority of shares in the company for the benefit of employees. The Trustees do not manage the company but management is responsible to the Trustees (as shareholders) for how it manages the company. They have been around for about 10 years and are promoted as a way by which the owners of a company (typically its founders) can ensure that it lives on after them with the same ethos and values. Richer Sounds, the audio-visual retailer, went this way four years ago.

Steve

I'd be very interested to hear what people whose main photographic preference and output is B&W think about the K3iii Monochrome. Seeing Don McCullin's B&W photos of the Somerset landscape was an eye-opener for me. A type of landscape that I thought I knew fairly well became something quite different that I hadn't seen. And part of that was because it was B&W. The other part, of course, was because the photos had been produced (taken and printed) by an exceptional photographer who had seen and photographed human misery and suffering through several decades, mostly in B&W.

Steve

Not sure what you mean here, the focal length (105mm) is always the same. I too like the bokeh that this lens can produce, however I've seen it vary markedly with aperture.

Steve

Someone, somewhere, is no doubt developing an AI plug-in for Photoshop that takes a mono image and adds colours to simulate that authentic, old-time, hand-coloured B&W photo look...

Steve