Yesterday, I was shooting some new photography material in Blackpool with a friend. Much of the day was spent around the town, photographing with the iPhone. Interestingly, a lot of the material we photographed 12 months earlier has gone or is inaccessible due to demolition work, but I’ll save those photos for another day.
Today, I want to share a couple of photos taken at sunset on the beach.
The weather had been sunny with a clear blue sky all day, which made photography difficult. When faced with conditions like this, I like to look for shadows, which I found plenty of below the Central Pier. We were also lucky that the tide had turned, revealing clean sand rather than a mass of footprints.
This was photographed using my Nikon Z7ii with the Nikon 24-120 lens at 24mm. I had the camera mounted on a tripod for this one using f/14.0 and ISO64 to give a shutter speed of 1/30-second. I would normally handhold a shot like this, but I was feeling a little shutter-happy after all the iPhone shooting, so I was using the tripod to slow me down.
I love this photo, and the Nikon Z7ii is fast becoming my favourite camera. I also love the Nikon 24-120 lens and the sun-star effect it produces (although I need to clean my lens UV filter).
Then, about 40 minutes later, as the sun was dipping into the cloud on the horizon, I took this next shot.
This is the North Pier, which has swarms of starlings flying around it. Only a couple of people were on the beach, but they had stopped to watch and film the murmuration on their phones; it was quite mesmerising. Although difficult to see at this small size, the person in the centre of the frame is wearing a white hat, which really draws your attention
The image was also shot using the Nikon Z7ii and 24-120 Nikon lens at 120mm (it was the longest lens I had with me). The exposure is 1/15 second at ISO360 and f/13.0. I shot this one handheld, with the camera set to auto ISO and a minimum shutter speed of 1/15 second.
I hope you like the images, and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Robin,
Thank you for sharing your The North Pier, Blackpool photo. And pointing out the man with the white cap. Really captures the photo when one sees it up close! And the starlings swarming about the pier can really be “felt”. Must have been quite a wonderful scene!
Wei Chong
Thank you. It was wonderful to be there. I love the beach at Blackpool, especially in winter when there aren’t many people about.
Lovely images Robin, and how very rewarding to have camera in hand, sand reflections, evening lit pier, person nicely in place and starlings framing the pier. One of those wonderful moments where it comes together and your’e able to capture it. Nice framing too.
Thank you. After a day of photographing the town, it was a nice change.
Superb shot of the pier and murmuration, Robin.
I was just wondering… I notice you are becoming enamoured of your Z7. Can you really call yourself “The Lightweight Photographer” anymore?
The tagline of the website is “Making Mirrorless Work” which was the whole point of the Lightweight Photographer. When I satrted the blog back in April 2012, there weren’t many options for mirrorless other than pocket cameras and micro 43. At the time I seemed to be in regular arguments that mirrorless was the future. Now that Nikon, Canon and others have adopted the technology people seem to attach the sensor size to the term lightweight. To answer your question, yes I am lightweight. The Nikon Z7ii is the same size as my G9. It’s a winderful camera but I also shoot with an Olympus EM5 iii micro 43 camera, a Panasonic G9 micro 43 camera and various Fuji XT cameras, along with my iPhone.
Fair enough. I guess we all have our definition as to what qualifies as lightweight. I was a very early adopter of mirrorless with the original Sony A7 and then its various iterations because of perceived lightness. My own experience has been that the camera is not an issue. It is the lenses. I eventually ditched everything for an EM5 iii (paired with an OM-1 now), and have been struck with how good and relatively light the Olympus Pro lenses are.
If I do feel the need for ultimate image quality I use (you guessed it) a medium format camera. 🙂
Any mirrorless camera was lightweight when I started using them. The DSLR’s at the time had begun to grow in size and weight. I get your point about the lenses but the Z7 lenses aren’t much larger than my Fuji system. It’s only really the Micro 43 zoom lenses that are substantially smaller. But being lightweight doesn’t mean that I only shoot with small cameras. At the end of the day, I have a business to run so I shoot with whatever meets my business needs. The EM5 iii is a great camera and I have considered the OM1 as well as I’m a huge fan of Micro 43. I also had a Sony A7r for a while and paired it with Canon lenses because the Sony lenses were too large. Even then I found the system unbalanced and the canon lenses too large for the body. Nice image quality but a pain to handle. The longer I do photography the more the more important handling becomes to me.