Chris Worfolk's Blog

We’ve gradually been working our way round the seafood we haven’t tried in the market.

Winkles are delicious. They’re also very small however, so you don’t get much meat. You also have to extract them with something – we used Elina’s crocheting hooks, size 1 or 1.5 does the job.

Scallops I was a little disappointed with, although maybe I just didn’t cook them right. I fried them in butter, but the pan might not have been hot enough. They’re a cross between prawn and chicken really.

Whelks provide quite a lot of meat for such a small shell, and are big enough to get out with your fork. Not as tasty as winkles though.

Cuttlefish is quite nice, though again you have to get the cooking right. It’s very similar to octopus and squid, given they’re almost the same thing. Apparently you’re supposed to find the ink pouch and carefully remove it, but I just dived in.

While in Finland, we spent the final three days of our time in Finland with Elina’s family, in Laitila.

We tried to swim in a lake at 2pm, but it was still freezing cold at this time, so in the end we gave up and spent the day enjoying the sunshine from the bank.

This is a rose from Riitta’s garden. She has a lot of beautiful flowers.

The view from Henry’s garden.

Henry’s cat.

We spent Friday evening at a summer cottage by a lake. This is the view as the sun went down.

It was surprisingly warm when we went for a midnight swim.

While in Helsinki we stayed at Hotel Haven.

I was expecting the rooms to be really small, as they are shown so on the virtual tours. However, it seems that is only for sea room views; our room was quite large.

Positive points:

• Good size room
• Very well furnished
• The wifi was included and didn’t come with any stupid login system – you just got the WPA2 code, connected as many devices as you liked and you’re on permanently
• TV in the bathroom
• Shower had a massaging shower head
• Breakfast was good
• Staff were helpful
• It was very quiet
• The beds were very comfortable and I got some brilliant night’s sleep
• The curtains did a great job of keeping the light out

Points for improvement:

• Our TV slash entertainment system didn’t work on the first night
• The bed was two single beds joined together
• The windows didn’t open

Overall, it was a really enjoyable stay and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back.

Photos:

Video review:

This was my second day out photographing one of our local american football teams, the Yorkshire Rams. Here is what I learned…

Set the white balance manually. During the Lancashire Wolverines game I left it on auto, whereas in this game I manually set it to cloudy and left it there. The photos came out a bit cold in the first game and a little inconstant too. This time they have a more consistent, warm feel.

An exposure of 1/500 is not fast enough to freeze the action. It is OK for players running around but when the ball is being thrown, you need at least 1/1000. When I photograph birds in flight I use 1/1250, and the ball is probably moving faster than that, so makes sense.

I tried taking off my 2x extender and just using my 70-200mm lens (whereas with the extender on I would get a focal range of 140-400mm), as this allowed me to open the aperture up to 2.8. I didn’t see much benefit though, I was already shooting at around ISO 100, so I simply didn’t need to open it up to that unless I specifically wanted to do so, and while that allows me to easily blur at the background, it makes it difficult to keep everything in focus. So 140-400mm f5.6 it is then; it is broad daylight after all.

I also tried increasing the ISO to 3200 in an attempt to get a much greater depth of field. This allowed me to work at up to f11 even at 400mm, again I didn’t see a great deal of difference, but I might give it another go next time and see if I can shoot some catches and plays where I don’t have time to re-focus the camera.

I used AI servo and back button focusing for this shoot. That means I turned off auto focus activation when you press the shutter half way down (I posted a video on how to do this a few weeks ago), and used a button on the back to activate it instead. Because it is in AI servo mode (continuous auto focus), I could then press this button on the back to focus, hold it if I wanted it to work continuously and then release when I wanted to take a shot, or even leave it going the whole time. Mostly I focused and then left it alone, unless the action started coming towards or away from me.

There is also an element of luck to it. I was shooting in continuous mode, but cameras can only take so many shots per second, and given a kick of a throw takes less than one, being able to capture the exact moment comes down to chance. Of course, the more expensive your camera is, the more it can take – my 6D clocks in at 4.5 I think, whereas if you have a 5D Mark III it can take up to 6.

You can find some of the photos in a previous blog post.

My photos from the East Kilbride Pirates at Yorkshire Rams game. The full set is on Flickr.

Last month, Leeds City Toastmasters teamed up with Leeds Speakers’ Corner to put on “Toastmasters in the Park”. That is basically what LSC do anyway, but with more Toastmasters there. Thanks to Chanaka for being Toastmaster and John for his excellent speech. Myself, John W and Andrew spoke as well, as did a few members of the public!

A video of the event is also available below.

12 hostages. 24 hours. 1 Partridge.

Steve Coogan bringing Alan Partridge to the big screen has been long awaited. Was it worth said wait? Yes, it probably was! While other comedies build up to huge, though sometimes disappointing, funny moments, Alpha Papa delivers clever, funny dialogue from start to finish.

There is always the danger that a comeback will ruin the franchise, but Alpha Papa has no such concerns. It does a fine justice to the Partridge legend.

We went to Everyman Cinema, which once again offered an excellent experience. We meet up with Chris and Carly beforehand for pizza in the restaurant that delivered to its usual standard as well.

The sixteenth book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series looks at music with rocks in it. It might be just a noise but it’s all the kids are listening to these days.

It has some good characters in it, including Susan (the granddaughter of Death), Dibbler and the Death of Rats. The commentary on the music industry, stardom and the rise of rock and roll was somewhat interesting, though I didn’t find it particularly deep.

Higher end Canon EOS cameras have two types of shooting modes – regular and silent. I use silent almost all of the time because I find regular quite loud and annoying. However, surely there must be some disadvantage to it, or they would just have silent mode as the only mode and be done with it.

The answer is it is to do with how fast the camera can take photos.

Under regular continuous shooting, my EOS 6D can burst to 4.5 frames per second, whereas on silent continuous mode, it slows down to 3fps. So if you’re trying to capture action and things in motion, best switch off the silent mode until after you’re done.

I’ve recently purchased a polarising filter for my camera, so I took it out for a test run. You can get quite a difference out in the bright sunlight, though some times it seems to detract from the dramatics of the image. Below is a photo I took of Leeds Canal, with light polarisation on the left and heavy polarisation on the right.

The fly and clouds come out with a lot more texture in the one on the right, and it’s difficult to see at this size but the water goes from a horrible grey to a beautiful blue too.

At first, it felt a little like just under-exposing the photo though. If I wanted to prevent the cloud detail from blowing out, surely all I had to do was drop the exposure a little. But of course that isn’t the case, as can be seen in the photos below.

In the top two photos, I haven’t used much polarisation. In the top one I’ve used the camera’s recommended settings, and in the second one I’ve sped up the exposure a few notches. In the third one I’ve put it back to the camera’s recommended setting, but used heavier polarisation.

As you can see in the third one, I’ve obtained the rich detail of the cloud, while still maintaining the vibrant face of the building, and captured much more detail from the block of flats behind it too.