Travels and Travails.
Our summer holiday in Kent has proved to be an eventful one. I’ll start at the end which may sound weird but bear with me. Last Thursday, I managed to break my left ankle after an innocuous slip down a grass bank. I now sit here with a bright pink cast in my lower leg , catching up on rest that I didn’t really get in hospital. So that’s now, what about before ?
Our visit south was a fabulous fortnight in fabulous surroundings and excellent weather. Photographically, it was an opportunity to use my Nikon D750 and a new old classic, the Nikon D700. The D700 is a relative dinosaur having first been introduced in 2008. It’s a 12.8mp full frame professional camera but that does not tell you much. It has a sensor unlike any camera released since 2010 other than Sigma as it is built and designed by Panasonic (nearly all modern digital cameras have Sony sensors). It produces colours and textures unlike anything I’ve ever used.
You get clarity, detail, depth, a richness of colour I haven’t come across before. This image taken on Dungeness beach was taken with the D700. You don’t feel at any disadvantage using it and there is in some ways, an advantage to using a simple, reliable, solid performer. Its autofocus is very good, the optical viewfinder is bright and clear, the button layout is logical and useful. I’ve paired it with my existing Nikon g lenses as well as the brilliant Nikon AF-D 35mm f2 lens. I used the D750 on alternate days because I love that camera. I’ve become a real Nikon convert and a bigger DSLR fan than I was before the D700 arrived.
We have spent a lot of our holiday by the coast. Three specific locations, Dungeness, Hastings and Whitstable. All three are on the Kent coast and each has a unique feel to them. The photo above was taken on Hastings beach where the fishing boats are moored on the pebble beach with huge cables, anchors and sometimes diggers or earth movers! The old and new sit side by side with wrecks inhabiting the same area as working boats.
Dungeness is an almost other worldly environment. A huge shingle and pebble flat beach area running half a mile inland. The houses are mainly old wooden huts spread sparsely across the landscape, all in sight of two lighthouses and a nuclear power station. It has an eerie, bleak feel to it but it’s my kind of place.
Whitstable is a fishing town on the north Kent coast. It’s famous for its oysters and the fishing huts lining the beach. The pebbled beach is divided by wooden groynes which dive deeply into the English Channel. The sunsets at Whitstable were as good as any Mediterranean one I have experienced.
Apart from the broken ankle and resulting problems we have experienced, our trip south was a joy. We really packed a lot in and to have my two Nikons with me, never felt at a disadvantage. I know I’m someone who has used all sorts of cameras in my time and has waxed lyrical about many, I enjoy using the Nikons because the do what I want them to do and do it really well. They aren’t new technology or high megapixel beasts but I can produce professional images for a comparatively low budget. They were real companions on our journey. As for me, I have several weeks of recovery, contemplating, planning and preparation for my next adventure. We hope to go to Scotland in autumn (ankle dependant) and I have an exhibition in a month.
