The Wrong Kind Of Ring

On Wednesday I headed out to do a bit more shooting on the time-lapse project Im currently working on. This time my aim was a couple of shots of Tower Bridge as there were a some old sail barges due to come through.  Initially my plan was to shoot on the Canon 85mm 1:1.2L II I had hired for another job.  This is a stunning piece of glass with great milky bokeh and stunning sharpness even wide open, I wanted to see how it performed stopped down a bit though in daylight shooting.  I set up on London Bridge and got a good mid shot of Tower Bridge in the centre of the frame.  It was at this point though that I realised my schoolboy error, the filter thread was 72mm diameter and therefore not compatible with the 77mm adapter ring I was carrying for my ND filters. This meant that I couldn't get the shutter speed slow enough to use with my Little Bramper intervalometer and had to abandon my plans of shooting the 85 and switch to something wider. (incidently the Little Bramper is a brilliant piece of kit that allows you to change iso and ramp both shutter speed and interval times over a defined period. Check it out here if you are into time-lapse).

The second "ring" related element to my afternoon came from the sheer number of people that kept coming up to me to ask why the Olympic rings were turned upwards on the bridge.  When I told them that they moved to allow the bridge to rise so boats could pass through they turned their noses up and one woman exclaimed "I hope they don't stay like that for long.  It's much prettier with the rings showing!"  Now I'm used to having weird conversations with unknown members of the public, its all part of the territory that comes with standing in one place too long with a camera, but I was astounded by how many people could overlook the engineering wonder that is Tower Bridge to be more concerned with temporary Olympic marketing. Really people, really!

The rest of the afternoon was an unfortunate washout as the weather got progressively worse and I ended up returning home with one very short clip and very wet feet.  It looks like the images have some good dramatic light to start with but unfortunately get a bit diffused towards the end.  There are some nice moments but I think I may try again in a couple of weeks when there are some Tall Ships due through as part of the Olympic whimsy fest.