Welcome to my Photography Blog

Photo of Mark Heath

Hello and welcome to my photography blog. Photography has been a long-term hobby for me. I purchased my first Digital SLR camera – the Canon 350D – in September 2006, and have always been keen to seize the opportunities from new camera and lens technologies to improve my images. While I still take the vast … Read full article

Photographing Some of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals and Churches – 2023 progress

Durnstein Abbey

I’ve been really enjoying photographing cathedrals and churches that I’ve seen with my own eyes. On a recent cruise, I met a well-travelled fellow photography enthusiast who proudly told me that he had photographed 100 cathedrals across the world. I love meeting passionate, enthusiastic people and he really enjoyed discussing which ones were his favourites … Read full article

Experiments With Photoshop’s New Generative Fill Hint at the Future Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI example

For my type of photography (mainly capturing and recording scenes that I see with my own eyes), I use very little of the full potential of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw. However, these tools have proved invaluable for basic tasks such as cropping and recovering highlight areas (such as blue skies) in the conversion … Read full article

Guide on How You Can Halve Your Heating Costs

Heating

In the last few weeks, I have expanded my guides for households looking to significantly reduce their heating bills. Here’s my latest guide for those with oil heating: Top Tips to Halve Your Oil Heating Bills, and Increase the Value of Your Home   While the heating cost savings achievable with each individual tip are … Read full article

Launch of Heating Guides to Save You Money

Cat

In March 2021, I announced an online partnership with Paul Braybrooke Limited. After a successful first year, we are expanding our geographical online reach beyond Cambridgeshire to include parts of Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Rutland, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. While there is the option to expand even further, our preference is to remain local to deliver an extremely … Read full article

What are Sony’s Best Mirrorless Lenses?

Robin

During 2021, Sony released some amazing lenses for its full-frame mirrorless cameras. Apart from a missing 85mm F1.2 lens (which hopefully will appear in 2022), Sony now offers a comprehensive range of lenses with superb performance. I’m often asked for lens recommendations so, in this post, I identify my favourite nine Sony lenses and provide … Read full article

Sony 12-24mm F2.8 GM Sample Images

Earlier blog posts providing sample photos with various Sony lenses have proved popular, so here I continue with another great lens – the Sony 12-24mm F2.8 GM model. In an earlier blog post, I provided sample images from the superb Sony 14mm F1.8 GM lens, which has just won DPReview’s 2021 award for “best prime … Read full article

Sony 100-400mm GM Sample Images

Parrot

The Sony 100-400mm GM lens has quickly become one of my very favourite lenses, and in this post I provide some sample images taken in the last few weeks with this superlative lens. Paired with the Sony A1 camera, its amazing autofocus performance means that you can capture fast action easily, and sharpness is superb. … Read full article

Commencing a New Photography Project – Norfolk – in Memory of Raine Thompson

Norfolk

Living in rural Cambridgeshire, I have enjoyed visiting places across the county and taking photographs. However, despite living relatively close to Norfolk, I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I’ve rarely visited Norfolk, apart from day trips to Hunstanton and Norwich. Well better late than never! My friends Nick and Raine (shown above) adored the North … Read full article

Sony 14mm F1.8 Sample Images

Tree

Sony has been on a roll recently with the introduction of several groundbreaking lenses. Following quickly after the amazing Sony 50mm F1.2 GM lens, Sony has introduced its ultra-wide-angle 14mm F1.8 GM lens. Just as with the Sony 50mm F1.2 lens, it is astonishing how much performance Sony has packed in to such a small, … Read full article

Sony 50mm F1.2 GM Sample Images

Despite the coronavirus lockdowns, camera manufacturers have been hard at work developing new cameras and lenses, with a major battle between Sony and Canon. Sony has just released its first every lens using an F1.2 aperture, which many in the industry said would be impossible. Pre-ordered many weeks ago, my new Sony 50mm F1.2 GM … Read full article

Online Partnership with Paul Braybrooke in Cambridgeshire

Paul Braybrooke

I really enjoy applying cutting-edge web development techniques and technologies to help local businesses to compete with national (and often) global competitors. As reported in my recent article The Increasing Importance of Website Speed and Simplicity, the introduction of website speed as a key factor in Google’s search engine ranking algorithm in 2021 brings major … Read full article

Photographing for Posterity

I am currently building up an online library of old photographs of the village where I live so that these amazing images can be shared as widely as possible. Thank you to the people and local museums that have provided these. These images have proved immensely popular, being viewed about 50,000 times in the last … Read full article

Hitting the Milestone of One Million Views of Spotlight Photographs

I really enjoy working with Graham and Sarah Wilkinson (below) at Spotlight Productions – which is a youth musical theatre group based in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. I’ve now taken photos of several productions. Graham and Sarah are an inspiration and have made such a difference to young people in the area. To date, they have put … Read full article

How Many Megapixels are Enough on a Camera?

I always try to capture images is as high as resolution as possible – not really to display on mobile phones and today’s display technology but for posterity. In many years, display technology will have advanced rapidly and those images that look fine today on a small screen will look distinctly blurry, noisy and lacking … Read full article