January | 2016 | John Wallace Photography

For the fans of bicycle races out there my village in the Barossa Valley (South Australia) became the centre for the international bike race “Santos Tour Down Under”. We had the luck of hosting the men’s event Stage 1 on the 19th January and the previous day we also hosted the women’s event stage 3 as they raced around the southern Barossa. As a photographer an event like this was one not to be missed, as you all can expect the village was packed solid for the 3 lap circuit which saw them clocking up 130 Km as they hit the finish line. The bikes were only in view for seconds so this was a good opportunity to try out the sports mode capability of my Canon EOS 760D. Standing at the barrier with an 18-135mm lens attached gave me a good viewing choice but the speed that these bikes were travelling demanded more control than judgement. I set the camera to sports mode, the drive mode to continuous and the autofocus to AI Servo, this meant that once a bike rider was chosen the lens auto tracked him while the camera recorded 5 frames a second as long as I kept him in the viewing pane. I was quiet pleased with the results and have attached a couple for your comments. Even though I’m predominantly a landscape photographer I’m still trying out new functions on this camera as the opportunity arises.

Santos Tour Down Under

Although I do the majority of my work for uploading to a number of sites for online sales there always comes a time when a print is required whether its a simple 6 x 4 for the album or posting to the family or an 18 x 12 to frame up formally. So the first question is do I print at home or travel to town with a jpg on a stick and have someone print it for me. The end result in both cases can often be “Why is the print different to what I see on the screen?”.

And so we enter the wonderful world of colour calibration. I like to print up to A4 at home more for convenience sake, so its essential to me that the colours I see on the screen are the same as those printed. The pc and the printer should share the same colour profile which loads on start up but if the pc profile is wrong to start with it will never match any Pro or local kiosk colour setup.

The monitor profile can be calibrated manually (the harder way) or by a calibrator (the easier way). I use a Spyder 3, though its outdated now it still performs well, which new model just depends on your budget, the following is a link for those interested: http://spyder.datacolor.com/display-calibration/

If I was into portraits then regular monitor calibration would be essential to preserve skin tones. I’m mostly into landscapes so have some leeway although I am aware that my uploaded files need to be seen correctly on other sites and customers monitors.

The difference could be as little or as important as seen in these two images: